SSP Thailand – Lucas Mahias conquers the Superpole

Bruno Gomes

March 24, 2018

Frenchman Lucas Mahias looks on track for his second win of the season in Supersport. Photo credit: World SBK

The reigning World Supersport Champion, Lucas Mahias, onboard his Yamaha R6 of the GRT Yamaha Official WorldSSP team, was again the fastest rider on Chang International Circuit during the Superpole session for tomorrow’s race of the World Supersport Championship.

The Frenchman was in another level throughout the Superpole 2 session and managed to get more than eight tenths of a second between him and his rivals for most of the day, but in the closing stages of qualifying the difference came down to half a second. But the late effort from Jules Cluzel, on another Yamaha, wasn’t enough to take Mahias from pole position, so the champion will start the race in front of the field.

Third place, and last in the front row, went to Federico Caricasulo, with the Italian making a front row only with Yamaha machines.

As for the Asian riders racing here in Thailand in the Supersport race, the best in qualifying was Ratthapong Wilairot (Yamaha Thailand Racing Team) with the 5th best time in Superpole 2, and next to him in the third row of the grid will be Thitipong Warokorn (CORE Kawasaki Thailand Racing Team) in sixth, an excellent result for these two Thai wild cards.

Azlan Shah didn’t do well in Superpole qualifying but will fight for the points in the race! Photo credit: Kawasaki Puccetti Racing

Another of the Thai wild cards this weekend in Chang International Circuit, Decha Kraisart (Yamaha Thailand Racing Team), also made big improvements from yesterday but didn’t pass to Superpole 2, his time allowing him to start the race from the fifth row in 13th position, and on the next row, in 17th place, Malaysian Azlan Shah (Kawasaki Puccetti Racing) didn’t have an easy qualifying today and also didn’t pass to Superpole 2.

Shah tried something new on his Kawasaki Ninja ZX-6R, specifically using different gearing, but that decision didn’t prove to be useful and Azlan Shah ended up losing a lot of cornering speed in the first and last turn of the Thai track, and that didn’t allow the Puccetti rider to go higher than 17th on Superpole 1.