Riders were forced to use racing tyres in Superpole 2 during the Thai round of the World Superbike Championship after a series of unfortunate events meant there simply weren’t enough to go, er, round.
The original shipment of qualifiers was damaged in transit and, while that was remedied with an urgent order from Pirelli’s German-based manufacturing facility, the replacement order was subsequently impounded by customs.
They were eventually released, but not before Pirelli had no choice but to withdraw the tyre from the allocation and issue each team with one additional soft race tyre to take its place. However, with KRT’s Jonathan Rea on track-best pace on the race tyre, it clearly made little difference overall.
“It was funny not having qualifying tyres, but it didn’t change anything,” Ducati’s Chaz Davies said. “It was the same format for us – just a bit less grip.”
With no traditional qualifying tyres available after the customs calamity in Bangkok, Phillip Island — not Chang — proved to be the last round where the ‘one-lap specials’ were available in WorldSBK.
By Gordon Ritchie
