American rider Ben Bostrom was excited this morning after qualifying for his first ever Superpole aboard the Koji Renegade Honda, however bad luck spoilt his chance to shine.
Speaking exclusively to
Crash.net at the Valencia round of the World Superbikes Ben explains what happened; “Something in the way the brakes are spaced on there, I'm not sure but it over heated on the warm up lap and caused the rotar;which is supposed to float, it locked the rotar in at an angle. So it just over heated and stopped the front wheel.I said to myself 'Welcome to Superpole.' It can only happen NOW!
"We're starting fourth row which is the best starting spot, so I can't be too mad. I think we had a really good shot at being second row, but you can't complain if you're coming from the ninth row to the sixth, then fifth and then fourth. We are creeping forward a little slower than I wanted to.
"We were pretty excited to get up this morning because we knew we had more or less found a good solution and the bike was going to work very well. I was excited to get up this morning and it worked, we got right on it and put ourselves into Superpole so that was the first step.
"This afternoon we learned a few things also just on the open practice for the free run. Real excited about Superpole and then that ended up being a kind of disaster for us."
Bostrom had hoped to be further forward on the grid as Valencia is a difficult track to pass on.
“Here it is tricky to pass. I need to think of some clever way on the first lap to make up a lot of spots as it is tricky to pass - there are a lot of risks. That is another reason I wanted to start at the front. It is a beautiful track but it is tight and precise. But like everything else a lot of mistakes are made, things happen. We might do better than we thought," said Bostrom.
