Alstare Suzuki's Troy Corser was once more on the podium in the Corona Extra World Superbike championship at Misano and here, in his exclusive Crash.net column, he talks about his Superpole lap, riding in such hot conditions and parties for two-year-olds...
Hi folks and welcome to my fourth column, which follows my two third places at Misano. I had difficulties in the races, not least with the high temperature and having to make three race starts for the first race affected the clutch, but I still have a 73-point lead in the series and I don't intend to let anybody catch me...
My pole position was perfect; the bike was working really well. From when we first got to Misano we didn’t really have to change the bike too much, although we did try just a few things to see if we could improve it, but I was pretty happy with how the bike was.
The tyres were the biggest thing for us in Italy, especially with the high temperatures - the Pirellis don’t seem to like the heat very much and it was above 50 degrees on the ground on Saturday, so I don’t think any tyre would really like that temperature.
Despite the heat the bike was working well. I tried a qualifying tyre just before Superpole; I had better grip than on the race tyre, but not as much as I’d had in the morning.
So when I started the Superpole lap I was a little cautious in the first split. However the tyre worked well and I just pulled the throttle and I knew I could make up some time on the second half of the track anyway compared to what I’d done on the last tyres.
It was pretty much a perfect lap, it wasn’t 100% - I just didn’t want to make a mistake and risk crashing and it’s important to be on the front row - but I felt confident that I could be on pole. I haven’t been struggling to do the times since we got here so I’m really happy
