Jason O’Halloran got his Bennetts British Superbike Championship challenge back on track on Saturday afternoon as he claimed pole position for the opening race of the weekend at Donington Park. The McAMS Yamaha rider came from Q1 into Q2 where he got the better of championship leader Bradley Ray (Rich Energy OMG Yamaha) and Tom Sykes (MCE Ducati).
Sykes, O’Halloran, Tom Neave (Honda Racing), Ryan Vickers (FHO BMW), Lee Jackson (Cheshire Mouldings FS-3 Kawasaki) and Chrissy Rouse (Crowe Performance BMW) were the riders to progress from Q1 but when the 12 minutes of Q2 got underway, it was Leon Haslam (VisionTrack Kawasaki) who made the initial running with a 1’29.337.
He was soon pushed to third by Glenn and Andrew Irwin, but it was O’Halloran who was the first in the 1’28s with a 1’28.994, although he was only there for a matter of seconds as Ray went quickest with a 1’28.811.
However, they were all upstaged by Sykes who went 0.230s clear with a strong lap of 1’28.581, which was also three tenths of a second inside the lap record.