he dry and bright weather continued to provide almost ideal conditions for the start of Superpole Qualifying at the 5.077km long Motorland Aragon circuit.

A positive performance in Superpole from Lowes took him from the 11th fastest rider on Friday to third on the Race One grid, after setting a lap time just 0.159 seconds from the new track best on his bimota KB998 Rimini.

Axel was 11th after the Superpole Qualifying session, and he will start the Superpole Race in that position on Sunday. Bassani had to start the opening race on Saturday from the back of the grid, however, after he was deemed to have not respected the yellow flag procedure in FP2.

Once the race got underway, at 14.00 local time in Spain, Lowes was inside the top six, and would end up in fifth place after Álvaro Bautista crashed in front of him. Lowes reacted quickly to avoid his rival and pushed with a balance of pure pace and self-control to take fifth position, less than 6.5 seconds behind the race winner, Toprak Razgatlioglu.

Bassani’s recovery from the very last spot on the grid was conducted at full pace, and with a cool head, as he passed no fewer than 14 other riders (after one rider crashed out on his own) to end up in eighth position.

His recovery was such that he only finished 14 seconds from the race win, despite losing a little bit of lap time as he passed each rider.

Sunday 28 September at Motorland will feature the ten-lap Superpole Race and then a final 18-lap WorldSBK race. This time around Alex will replicate his third place start from Superpole, while Axel will launch from his original placing in the fourth row.

Alex Lowes stated: “The qualifying lap is one of the best laps I have done. I was on the limit but the bike is giving me the confidence to do that. I am really happy with qualifying but for the race I was just saying to myself, ‘accept it, accept it, accept it’ because on the first lap I lost two places and every lap I was losing a bit in this sector, then catching it back up in another sector, then losing it again. For me it was a good race to not over-ride to try to catch up, but use the parts of the track where our bike is fast. The way the bike turns, in T4, T5, T7, the changes of direction in T8 and T9, the bike is really strong in those areas. We did the best we could do, really. For us, that was like a win today, and the best we could really hope for. I was happy to be just over six seconds from the winner.”

Axel Bassani stated: “At this circuit you have to push quite a lot but it is not difficult physically. It was especially mentally difficult to understand when the right moment was to overtake the other riders and to not lose too much time. At the moment we are not really fast on the straights, so it is difficult to stay in the slipstream. Sometimes we have to take more risks in overtaking than the other riders. In the end it was not so bad, so I am quite happy. I recovered 15 positions.”