Frenchman Valentin Debise was the fastest rider during MotoAmerica Supersport Qualifying Practice One Thursday at Circuit of The Americas (COTA).
Debise, riding his M4 ECSTAR Suzuki GSX-R600, lapped the 3.4-mile road course in 2:13.475 to lead the rest of the field by approximately 0.7 second. And Debise said he wasn’t pushing very hard to reach that lap time.
“I went out with a new tire, and I did my best lap on my second lap,” said Debise. “Everything felt pretty easy because we changed something on the fork which is helping me a lot after the test [at COTA in March]. Without pushing that much the lap time came, so that is good.
“Instead of changing my tire to do a [faster] lap time, I decide to stay with the same tire and to change some shocks that we had to try and some little stuff. After the test, we were a little confused because we lost a lot of time. Now we want to change step-by-step the bike to understand better what is our problem and where it comes from. So after this practice I understand, and we will look at the data more clearly tonight to still improve the bike more.”
Garrett Gerloff, the defending MotoAmerica Supersport Champion, was second-best with a time of 2:14.212 on his Monster Energy/Yamalube/YES/Graves Yamaha YZF-R6. Gerloff said he tried a different fork setup, but he didn’t get the feeling he wanted from the new change. Unfortunately, Gerloff said, there wasn’t enough time to change the forks back during the session, preventing him from going any faster.
Gerloff’s teammate JD Beach had worse problems during the session as his YZF-R6 shut down and stranded him on track during the session, he said. The former MotoAmerica Supersport Champion got himself and his bike back to the pits, his team made repairs, he continued in the session, but he only got a handful of laps in the time remaining. Beach finished with a best lap of 2:14.655, which ranked him third in the session.
Fourth in the session was Daytona Anderson, who did a 2:14.777 on his Rickdiculous Racing Yamaha YZF-R6. That time was a big improvement over the 2:15.273 Anderson did during the Dunlop pre-season test at COTA.
M4 medAge Suzuki’s Nick McFadden was fifth-fastest overall and the quickest of the Superstock 600 riders competing as wild cards in the Supersport class at COTA. McFadden recorded a time of 2:16.909 on his GSX-R600.
MotoAmerica AMA/FIM North American Road Racing Series
Circuit of The Americas
Austin, Texas
April 20, 2017
Supersport Qualifying Practice One Results (All on Dunlop tires):
1. Valentin Debise (Suz GSX-R600), 2:13.475
2. Garrett Gerloff (Yam YZF-R6), 2:14.212
3. JD Beach (Yam YZF-R6), 2:14.655
4. Daytona Anderson (Yam YZF-R6), 2:14.777
5. Nick McFadden (Suz GSX-R600), 2:16.909
6. Benny Solis, Jr. (Hon CBR1000RR), 2:17.010
7. Brandon Paasch (Suz GSX-R1000), 2:17.637
8. JC Camacho (Suz GSX-R600), 2:18.427
9. Lucas Silva (Yam YZF-R6), 2:19.674
10. Brandon Cleland (Suz GSX-R600), 2:19.971
11. Jody Barry (Kaw ZX-6R), 2:20.657
12. Caroline Olsen (Yam YZF-R6), 2:21.655
13. Gauge Rees (Yam YZF-R6), 2:22.815
14. Joseph Giannotto (Yam YZF-R6), 2:22.856
15. Phil Horwitz (Yam YZF-R6), 2:22.926
16. Jaret Nassaney (Suz GSX-R600), 2:25.955
17. Mark Rhoades (Kaw ZX-6R), 2:28.862
18. Kris Lillegard (MV Agusta F3 675), 2:30.212