New Delhi: India’s first World Superbike team Mahi Racing Team India made a confident start to their World Supersport Championship campaign with their riders – Kenan Sofuoglu and Fabien Foret – claiming second and third positions respectively on the starting grid for Sunday’s race at Philip Island, Australia. This being the first race of the year.
Mahi Racing, which had made a debut in the World Super-sport Championship last year mid way has witnessed a solid performance from both their riders in the two qualifying sessions and showcased their credentials as front runners to take the chequered flag on Sunday.
Three time champion Sofuoglu cut about half a second from his Friday’s best lap timing to take second position with a timing of 1’33.157, while Foret bettered his timing by almost a second to clock 1’33.721.
Foret had suffered some technical problems and was down to 12th spot after the first qualifying. But on Saturday, the Frenchman returned stronger and faced no trouble in climbing up the grid.
After the race the much relieved man Foret said, "the competitive approach that we show as a team helpes us to better our timing every time we are out there. Hopefully both me and Kenan can better our performance and aim for a pole finish on Sunday."
In Saturday's qualifying, the pole went to Sam Lowes of Yakhnich Motorsports Yamaha, who had clocked a timing of 1’32.545 in Friday’s qualifying session and the new track record was enough for him to take the top position on the starting grid in the season’s first race.
However, Mahi Racing riders were confident that they could turn the table on Lowes on race day. “We were solid throughout the qualifying session and the bike (Kawasaki ZX-6R) performed fantastically over the two days,” said Sofuoglu from Phillip Island over phone.
Chairman and Managing Director of the team Arun Pandey expressed happiness over the performance of his team so far in the competition and said they are looking forward to their first race day.
“We have done extremely well in the first official testing and also in the qualifying. Now we are looking forward to the race and I am sure we would be in contention for the podium finish on Sunday,” he added.
