Sofuoglu’s progress to the second row included a loss of track time on occasion, but the triple world champion still managed to post a fast qualifying lap and take an important second row starting spot.
For Rolfo fifth place was a pre-race boost and he has high hopes of taking a season best finish in Sunday’s 14-lap WSS contest, scheduled for a midday start, just before the first Superbike race takes place.
Patrick Jacobsen (Kawasaki Intermoto Ponyexpres) placed himself eighth on the starting grid for the Sepang race as he once more showed promise in his rookie season.
Florian Marino (Kawasaki Intermoto Ponyexpres) had been fast all through the three free practice sessions but he was only able to finish 11th in qualifying, leaving him on the fourth row of the grid. Roberto Tamburini (San Carlo Puccetti Racing Kawasaki) was one place behind Marino, with Alessandro Nocco (San Carlo Puccetti Racing Kawasaki) 15th in qualifying today.
Christian Gamarino (Kawasaki Team Go Eleven) leads the sixth row of qualifying while Tony Covena (Kawasaki Ponyexpres Intermoto) was 22nd fastest.
“Kenan Sofuoglu: “We had a technical problem and in the afternoon I got an issue after the first ten minutes of qualifying. We had some questions with the bike set-up after the first day so we decided to change things completely front and rear with settings we had not tried before. We were pleased that they worked, we put in a soft race tyre and immediately I did a very good qualifying time. I missed some track time in qualification after that and that made things more difficult. For tomorrow we can be positive because have already gone in a good direction with the set-up and we will try to modify some more in the morning warm-up. Then we will be ready to race.”