It’s a front-row seat for flying star Laverty in Holland

Apr 17 2011 by Zoe Burn, Sunday Sun

EUGENE LAVERTY starts today’s two World Superbike Championship races from the front row in just his third ever Superbike race.

But ahead of the honorary Durham rookie, Carlos Checa looks unstoppable after scorching to another pole yesterday afternoon.

The Spaniard picked up where he left off at Donington Park last month as he took the top spot with relative ease after clocking a lap of 1min 35.292sec around the Dutch circuit.

The Althea Ducati pilot posted his hot lap with just over four minutes of the session remaining, smashing his previous time which had already powered him to provisional pole. “I am happy because I was struggling a little in Superpole One,” he said.

“We used race tyres and there were a few riders within half a second so it could have gone either way. We could have been inside, or we could have ended up outside.

“Getting a good lap here like this is great satisfaction for me because I didn’t expect it. It was quite hard out there but the team have done a great job.

“But we will have to see what happens in the races. The other teams are quite close and I think a lot of riders will be on our pace. It should be interesting.”

Second on the grid for today’s races is Czech favourite Jakub Smrz who, along with Laverty, had used all of his qualifying tyres up in the earlier two sessions and was forced to contest Superpole Three on soft race tyres.

“I wanted the pole,” said the Team Effenbert-Liberty Racing rider. “We had small problems with the tyres and Carlos was very fast, so I am pleased to be just behind him on the front row.”

But factory Yamaha rider Laverty was delighted with his third place, and has his eyes on at least one podium today. “We used our qualifiers up early and had to use soft race tyres in the last run so I surprised myself with that lap,” he said last night.

“When I saw it come up on the dash I knew it was going to be enough for the front row.

“But it was tough. I can do lap times in that region for a couple of laps but we have some work to do to make us able to do this for full race distance. I’ve been off the rostrum for a while so I am looking for a podium here. Two would be even better.”

The PATA Racing Team Aprilia of Noriyuki Haga rounds off the front row, with Jonathan Rea next best-placed Brit in fifth on the Castrol Honda.