McAMS Yamaha’s James Ellison bagged his second MCE British Superbike pole position of the year, and this time it was at Assen in very wet conditions.
The Cumbrian wasn’t too confident this morning when he saw the rain, but in the earlier free practice session his team made some ‘big steps forward’ with the R1 and then only made minimal changes during qualifying.
The only things his crew did alter were the handlebars which were lowered and added some more rebound. Ellison set a fast 1’54.027 in the rain and went P1, with JG Speedfit Kawasaki’s Leon Haslam and Tyco BMW’’s Christian Iddon completing the front row.
Ellison did admit that the conditions were not favourable and nearly crashed 18 times on the final lap and pushed his R1 to the limit, but the Riders Cup contender is hoping for dry weather for the first race on Sunday.
“It was a good session and we haven’t had good pace in the wet this season but we made some big step forwards this morning and tiny little changes over the session - lowered the handle bars, put some more rebound in and the thing just worked,” said Ellison.
“I think we made the best of a bad situation and to come out of it with pole position I am absolutely peaking. I was on my absolute limit and nearly crashed 18 times on the last lap so really happy. It will be good to start from pole in a dry race, hopefully those changes we made in free practice have worked and we will have a good race.”
