Smokin ...

Superpole 2 is now over and Ben Spies and his Yamaha big-bang R1 smoked the standing record by half a second ... on his backup bike! At that pace, that's huge. The front row tomorrow is going to have three Ducs beside Ben ... Laconi, Haga and Fabrizio. Biaggi, inspite of being fast, missed the Superpole cut and will be starting from the back half of the grid in 18th. Nakano on the other Aprilia is now out with a broken collarbone from this morning's first session. Carlos Checa managed to hang onto a second row spot in 8th and Shane Byrne hung onto 12th to make the third row.
It's going to be tough for Biaggi to work his way up to the podium, so I'm going with Spies to either do the double tomorrow, or split first/second 50/50 with Haga. If Spies finishes first, Haga will be second and vice versa. That leaves the third step on the podium up for grabs. Who's it gonna be? There are fast riders all the way back to the third row. No doubt the third step will be occupied by a different rider in each of the two races. I'm thinking the odds are with one or two of the Ducati riders: Laconi, Fabrizio, Smrz or Byrne, but then there's vetern Checa, and don't forget the two Suzukis of Kagayama and Neukirchner. It's possible Biaggi will make his way through to the podium in at least one race, but he'll have his work cut out for him.
So where's Hopper? ... way back in 16th, with a best time of 1:35.251 ... more than 2 full seconds off the other WSB rookie's pace. Well ... he's not going to make any kind of dent in this series, so I'm going to stop talking about him now.
I hope the TV coverage is good, because there's going to be a lot of action all the way back to about 8th place.