Abdulla al-Qubaisi took the Superpole for the third round of the Qatar Superstock 600 at the Losail International Circuit yesterday. It was al-Qubaisi’s second Superpole of the season as he set a lap time of 2:03.094 seconds, ahead of Mashel al-Naimi and Saeed al-Sulaiti.
The young Qatari rider was very happy with his performance. “In the free practice 2, I had a good feeling and I was riding mentally and physically focused. In the Superpole my strategy was to ride the first two laps with used tyres and change new ones for the last laps. It worked perfectly and managed to do the fastest lap in my last lap. Looking forward to win both race,” said al-Qubaisi.
Although al-Naimi’s bike was working perfectly and he had no problem with the tyres, the winner of last race couldn’t take the Superpole and finished 0.416 behind Al Qubaisi. “My bike was working very good today, no problem with the front tyre. I tried a new compound that worked good for long laps but I didn’t have good confidence in the break and in the middle of the corners. I changed and went back to my old tyre and it was perfect for the Superpole but Abdulla pushed too much and took it,” said al-Naimi
The defending QSTK Champion al-Sulaiti finished third fastest. “Overall I am happy with the results today and of course I was hoping for a better position for tomorrow on the grid. But the main thing is that we fixed problem from the last race, the rear suspension and we are able to have a good feeling with the bike,” he said.
In the QSTK Trophy, the fastest rider was the Frenchman Jeremy Parola, followed by Alexander Qabazard from Kuwait and Rayad al-Emadi.
In this QSTK round, there was another category of bikes riding in the championship – the QSTK 300 Supersport, which is made up of riders from the Qatar Motorsports Academy. A total of eight riders took part yesterday, where the fastest rider in the qualifying practice was the Qatar’s Saad al-Harqan followed by Hamad al-Sahouti and Yousef al-Darwish.
Meanwhile, a total of 27 cars joined the third round of the Qatar Touring Car Championship, with the two categories running at the same time, QTCC 2K and QTCC M240.
In the QTCC 2K, the fastest driver in the qualifying session was Ibrahim al-Abdulghani, who set a lap time of 2:26.922 in his Honda S200. Abdulghani, though, was not satisfied with his performance. “I qualified first in my class but I am a bit disappointed with my timings as my best time in the first round was 2:24.597 and now I am almost 3 seconds slower. I changed few things in the car and hopefully I do better tomorrow,” he said. Hamad al-Asam qualified in second place with a lap time of 2:28.116.
In the new category of the QTCC Championship, QTCC M240, the pole position was again for Abdulla al-Khelaifi with a lap time of 2:15.697, followed by Hamad al-Sulaiti and Nasser Saadon respectively, with a gap of 0.130s between the three of them.
Abdulla al-Qubaisi in action during the qualifying session for the third round of the Qatar Superstock 600 at the Losail International Circuit yesterday.
