Cru Halliday tops FP2 as Jack Miller starts to make progress

ASBK 2022

The Bend finale FP2

It had been busy final five minutes in the opening Superbike qualifying session this morning that ended with Troy Herfoss on top by a whisker over hometown hero Arthur Sissis.  That pair had been were almost eight-tenths clear of Mike Jones and Wayne Maxwell while Bryan Staring had been fifth ahead of Cru Halliday.   

The Thriller Motorsports triumvirate turned their first laps on completely new motorcycles that had never before turned a wheel in anger. Jack Miller on the Ducati finished FP1 in P11, while Josh Hook (Honda) and Marcel Schroetter (Yamaha) were P16 and P17.  Hooky had ridden that session with no traction or wheelie control, but was hoping to have that functionality before the end of the day.

Moto3 competitor Joel Kelso (Livson BMW) was P18 but almost four-seconds off the pace as he got up to speed on a Superbike for the first time.

The ambient temperature in the morning session had been just nudging 20-degree but by the time FP2 got underway at 1320 the mercury was breeching 30-degrees and the track temperature was heading towards 50-degrees.  While today started out cool it will not be like that tomorrow as overnight temperatures are only expected to go down to 18, before a projected top of around 30-degrees, with a chance of a thunderstorm to turn things balmy on Saturday afternoon… Sunday race day is expected to be much cooler with a forecast of only 21 and a very slight chance of an occasional shower.

Plenty of changes were being made to machines ahead of FP2.  Penrite Honda working to try and give Herfoss a better balanced bike, along with a change in fork springs and oil height for young Senna Agius.

I have read a bit on social media, I know, I should just turn it off… Anyways there is some talk getting about that Jack Miller is not being able to use the same tyres as available to everyone else this weekend. That is 100 per cent wrong, Miller is running on Pirelli rubber here this weekend and has the same selections available to him as any other Pirelli rider.

The primary difference on Jack’s bike compared to some of the Ducati machinery in the field, is that due to MotoGP testing restrictions, he can’t run the full spec’ Marelli ECU that is available to Ducati riders in the field. That is not as huge a drawback as it sounds as plenty of lap records had been set on the same standard V4 R electronics that Jack is using, and to be honest, those in the field that have the Marelli ECU fitted do not exactly have an army of data analysts to fully capitalise on its capabilities.

The primary things that could potentially hold Jack back this weekend is that he has had zero seat time on the bike. They have been offered access to basic set-up data and geometry from another team but what Jack will need in order to be competitive is to work through and achieve a suspension set-up that will allow him to arrive at a balanced set-up that gives him both good drive grip, and allows him to ride the bike in a way that he will be able to retain reasonable levels of grip over the 11-lap race distances. This is what every other team up and down pit-lane are also working towards as a goal. But Jack is starting from a base of zero, while all the others have plenty of set-up data and know their bikes intimately, thus it still is quite a huge task that Jack and his band of merry men have given themselves, and I am not understating the enormity of that challenge.

Anyways, let’s get on to what went down across the 25-minute FP2 session that got underway at 1320 this afternoon here in South Australia.

As we mentioned earlier, Josh Hook’s Fireblade did not have a functioning traction control or wheelie control system in FP1,  but they had got the system working for FP2. Unfortunately Hook went down at turn 12 early on in FP2 after the traction control failed to intervene which led to a high-side.  The machine took a reasonable knock and Hooky is icing his wrist as they evaluate what might be possible this afternoon.

RelatedPosts

Recapping the Nolan Superbike Masters finale from The Bend

November 15, 2024

Aussie wildcard stars in bLU cRU Asia-Pacific finale

November 14, 2024

Jack Miller knocked half-a-second off his best FP1 time on his first flying lap in a good sign that the Thriller Motorsports Team are working in the right direction. He improved on that again over the next couple of laps as both the track and the pace hotted up here at The Bend. In the pits after the session Jack indicated that he had felt a small vibration at times and Pirelli Techs suggested he try out the SC2 front in the next session.

A lot of riders banked good laps early on before returning to the pits for some set-up changes.

The pace then hotted up again in the last five minutes of the session. Cru Halliday setting a new outright fastest lap of the day of 1m51.518 with four-minutes left.  Arthur Sissis then moved up to P2 after setting a 1m51.591 on his eighth lap of the session. And that was how the session ended, Halliday on top from Sissis, Herfoss P3 and Jack Miller P4 ahead of Wayne Maxwell.  While Herfoss was third, he failed to go quicker than the time he had set in FP1.

Superbike FP2 Times

Supersport FP2 Times

The Bend ASBK Schedule