Good qualifying day for Barrier and Millet

It was not possible to do any practice yesterday because the track had to be cleaned, but Sylvain Barrier and Julien Millet qualified well on Saturday.

Sylvain Barrier was 5th, 1.3 seconds behind the pole position man Ayrton Badovini on an Aprilia. This is the first pole position for the RSV4. Julien Millet, who didn’t know the Autodromo Enzo and Dino Ferrari, learned quickly and finished in 28th position, 4.5 seconds from the pole. With a very few laps for Julien today, this is a good result. He is learning the bike and the team, for which he will ride at the next two races at Magny-Cours and Portimão.

Sylvain Barrier was second in the morning session, right behind the championship leader Xavier Simeon. So overall it was a good day for the Garnier Racing Team Junior, with a reasonable hope for a good result tomorrow.

Sylvain Barrier: “It has been fine. I tried to do a good time from the start because I had new tyres. I had new disk brakes and pads, so I had to run them in. Then we worked on the set up. After that I did a few fast laps just to make sure. We didn’t have enough time later to change both tyres, so we changed only the rear one. I had then a lack of grip on the front.

So finishing 5th without having the time to change the front tyre is not bad. Tomorrow I think I can do something good.”

Julien Millet: “It’s not so bad. I am learning this track which is difficult. I don’t have enough mileage. It should be OK for the race, I will try to catch a good group and stay with it.”

Michel Garnier (team manager): “I am happy. Julien Millet did very well considering this is his first time here. Nobody rode yesterday so today was for us a testing session. He will get a better result tomorrow. Sylvain Barrier rode well in the beginning of the session. He qualified well. He will start from the second row, which is often an advantage. He usually starts well. There are no worries for tomorrow.”

Qualifying results:

1 81 Badovini A. (ITA) Aprilia RSV4 Factory 1′52.417

2 19 Simeon X. (BEL) Ducati 1098R 1′52.609

3 71 Corti C. (ITA) Suzuki GSX-R 1000 K9 1′53.191

4 119 Magnoni M. (ITA) Yamaha YZF R1 1′53.666

5 20 Barrier S. (FRA) Yamaha YZF R1 1′53.726

6 21 Berger M. (FRA) Honda CBR1000RR 1′53.931 …

28 39 Millet J. (FRA) Yamaha YZF R1 1′56.924 …