In warm and humid conditions (with 25˚C air temperature and 45˚C on track), Althea Racing’s Carlos Checa took to the Misano World Circuit and continued to impress his rivals, concluding both practice and qualifying in first position and recording some extremely fast lap times in the process.
In this morning’s free practice, the potential podium contenders immediately made their presence felt but it was Carlos, ahead of Biaggi and Corser, who dominated, at the top of the timesheets for the entire session. He recorded a fastest lap of 1m36.4 in the final stages, thus improving on the already fast lap he had made much earlier on in the session.
During qualifying, which took place on an even hotter track, the Althea Racing flagbearer made numerous laps with consistently fast times (all under 1m37). He recorded his overall fastest time in the latter stages of the session, a 1m36.024 which permitted him to close in first position overall, an important result also considering the chances of wet weather tomorrow. At the end of this first day, Checa and his team declared themselves satisfied with the work completed and the provisional pole obtained.
Carlos Checa:
“We’ve made a good start today and we maintain the speed and rhythm of previous events; I feel I am able to ride the bike more or less at the limit. We had good feeling with the bike at Miller and also have useful information from the testing we did here at Misano a month ago so those factors have surely helped us here today. We saw some positive results during testing and those have given us a good base. Today it was important to test the tyres on the dry track as tomorrow rain is forecast and we need to know how the tyres behave in all conditions. We perhaps had a small advantage today but we know that Biaggi and Melandri will be there on Sunday and the races will be tough. Anything could happen come Sunday but the important thing is that we know we are competitive.”
TIMES (Qualifying):
- Checa (Ducati) 1’36.0
- Biaggi (Aprilia) 1’36.1
- Melandri (Yamaha) 1’36.4
- Fabrizio (Suzuki) 1’36.5
- Corser (BMW) 1’36.6
