JG Speedfit Kawasaki’s Leon Haslam began the day where he left off at Knockhill a few weeks back – in the 47 second bracket around the twisty and undulating Knockhill track. Haslam posted the time early in the session and rounded out Free Practice One at the head of the field by just 0.119 secs.
Glenn Irwin, who claimed in the lead up to the event that he’s out this weekend to end Haslam’s five race winning streak – and nothing short of a win will be deemed a success – ended the session in second position ahead of Brad Ray – who shot up the timesheets in the closing stages. Laverty, Linfoot, Dixon and Buchan all showed good pace with all bar Buchan inside that 48 second barrier.
The big news was that Josh Brookes crashed out of the session at Clark’s Corner having only completed 20 laps, but still posted a time quick enough for P15. It’s very tight on the timesheets so far with the top 16 riders all covered by less than a second.
Scottish hopes, Taylor and Tarran Mackenzie spent the session bedding themselves back into the track changes. Funnily enough, this pairing may the riders most effected by the new surface and re-profiled corners given the number of years they have been coming to Knockhill and the many hundreds of laps they have competed over the years. The changes may seem very drastic to them apposed to someone who only riders the track once at year over the BSB weekend. Tarran rounded out the session in P18, with Talyor a few places further down the order in P21.
FP2 for the Bennetts BSB riders comes up at 15.45pm today where we are likely to see further improvements across the board from the entire BSB field, as they make final preparations for tomorrow’s all-important DataTag Extreme Qualifying session at 4pm on Saturday afternoon.
Tickets for the event are online now, subject to pre-booking discounts and ticket collection at the track. Alternatively, tickets will also be available on the gate throughout the weekend.
So far, the event his living up to expectations with lap records being set across the classes and we’d expect the action to continue and times to fall even further as the weekend intensifies ahead of qualifying and the races.
Hope to see you here.
