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Following on from his top ten placing in yesterday's qualifying session, Hydrex Bike Animal Honda rider James Ellison proved to be the pick of the bunch as far as the British riders were concerned by qualifying in an amazing fifth place at round eleven of the Hannspree World Superbike Championship at Donington Park today.
In wet conditions, Ellison made good use of his twelve-lap allocation and towards the end of the session was as high as third in front of many of the World Championship front-runners. However in the dying throes of the session, the 27 year old from Kendal in Cumbria was bumped back a couple of places and as a result he heads row two of a star studded grid for tomorrow's two 23 lap races.
Beating the likes of World Champions Max Biaggi and Troy Corser, Ellison and team owner Shaun Muir were delighted with their effort and are feeling confident going into tomorrow's races.
James Ellison: "I'm a lot happier now. We had some issues with the suspension which we'd never had before and as a result we've found out lots of new things about the bike this weekend. I'm really happy with the way the lads have turned the bike around and they've come up trumps. I did a 1m 47s lap here to qualify in BSB and there's no way I thought I'd done such a quick time, so I'm really pleased."
Shaun Muir (Team Owner): "Little more than half a second from pole position and just 0.009s off the front row and his first time ever in a wet Superpole - I'm absolutely delighted. Hopefully he will be able to get a characteristically good start and he will have no problem getting away with the front-runners. He's in a good start position, just behind pole and the only problem we may have is if it's dry tomorrow as we've had no dry track time, but we're feeling confident."
Superbike Qualifying (Superpole)
1, T Bayliss (Ducati) 1m42.013s, 2, R Kiyonari (Honda) 1m42.353s, 3, C Checa (Honda) 1m42.486s, 4, R Xaus (Ducati) 1m42.573s, 5, J Ellison (Hydrex Bike Animal Honda) 1m42.582s, 6, M Biaggi (Ducati) 1m42.619s, 7, T Sykes (Suzuki) 1m42.624s, 8, T Corser (Yamaha) 1m42.875s, 9, C Crutchlow (Honda) 1m43.125s, 10, M Fabrizio (Ducati) 1m43.172s.
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