2013 Imola World Superbike Superpole Results: Red Flag? No Worries

A dry session, with three 12-minute sessions to determine final grid position, with Jonathan Rea ahead of Tom Sykes and Davide Giugliano entering as the provisional front row, and not even a red flag could interfere with fate.

In the first session, Jonathan Rea was, as usual, the first rider to set a time, giving everyone a target to beat. Tom Sykes set a time of 1’46.555 shortly after, while Carlos Checa crashed his Ducati before setting a lap time good enough for 12th, but he was nudged out of contention by a still-injured Leon Haslam. Marco Melandri set the second fastest time, to the joy of his team.

In Superpole 2, Rea set the target again and, again, Sykes knocked it down, setting the fastest ever lap with a 1’46.542. Ayrton Badovini put his beleaguered Panigale in second place, showing his faster laps all weekend have not been flukes. Michel Fabrizio, another rider who has been putting in good times all weekend, suffered from a problem with his Aprilia, forcing him to wheel it back to his garage before he could get a lap in.

Rea set the pace lap for Superpole 3, with a superb 1'46.556, but behind him, Sykes put an even better 1'46.287 when the red flag was brought out, cancelling his lap. Sykes's teammate Loris Baz crashed at 160mph, throwing his bike into an air fence so fast that it flew over to the next corner, spewing fuel over the tarmac. Baz came off much better than his bike, luckily, which was just as well as Kawasakis can be rebuilt easier than tall Frenchmen. Sykes would have completed his blistering lap without seeing the red flags, and he wasn't alone in losing a decent place as Laverty also had a lap cancelled. The session restarted with under six minutes to go.

After the restart, everyone apart from Baz, his only bike having been destroyed, went out and they all gave the area where Baz's bike landed a wide berth, but even that didn't stop an angry Tom Sykes from putting his team into fits of nervous laughter with an impossible 1'45.981, getting him his seventeenth career pole position.

A very happy Davide Giugliano was the fastest of the Aprilias, taking third ahead of both factory machines, while Jonathan Rea, happier than usual with his bike, took second place behind the King of Saturdays Tom Sykes, who somehow set his pole lap on a race tyre as his last qualifier was used in the red-flagged lap.

Results: