The Alto Evolution Honda team got their World Superbike assault off to a mixed start in Qatar with Joshua Brookes qualifying fourteenth while team-mate
Karl Muggeridge was prevented from setting a single lap, following technical issues with both of his machines.
Brookes worked hard to improve on his previous Qatar testing best by some three seconds, as good track conditions and more familiarity with his 2007 machine all played their part. “Not too bad for the first session because we improved on the best time we set here in testing recently,” said the young Australian, “There is maybe one second of improvement in the track surface the way it is now, but somewhere along the way we have also found over another second and a half. We have worked our way through similar settings to the ones we are using now during the tests, but for some reason we are much faster with them today. Pretty good for the first sessions.”
Muggeridge had a problem with his gearbox in the first untimed session and due to delays in that session there was no time to fix the problem before the afternoon. Two corners into the first lap of the afternoon session his second machine suffered an electrical problem which took all session to trace, preventing Muggeridge from setting a time. “Our bad luck has put us behind the eight ball this time,” he lamented, “I hoped for better on the first day and I am obviously very disappointed. I will look at tomorrow and we will see if we can move forward from there.”
Team Manager, Sergio Bertocchi also commented on their bad luck, “A good start for Joshua but very bad luck for Karl. There was so little time between the end of the untimed session and the official afternoon session we could not fix the first bike. Then in the afternoon there was a fault with the amplifier to the coils. But that took all session to trace. But for Josh the session was good, and we have good potential.”
