DesmoSport Ducati press release:

DesmoSport Ducati’s Corey Turner will line up on the third row of the Australian Superbike Championship (ASBK) grid at Sydney Motorsport Park following a positive day of qualifying aboard the factory-supported 1299 Panigale S.

Qualifying in eighth position with a fastest lap of 1m31.055s from the two 30-minute sessions, Turner credits a substantial set-up change to his improved second session on-track. It was also an immense turnaround following practice yesterday.

“Today and especially the second session was definitely a big improvement,” commented Turner. “I haven’t done many laps around here and my injured finger is definitely giving me a bit of grief.

“We changed a big setting in the front for this morning and it kind of helped, but it didn’t make too much of an improvement lap-time wise. Then we made a massive change for the second qualifying session and it was a bit of a risky one, but obviously it was worth it and it paid off.”

The 19-year-old looks forward to tomorrow’s racing schedule as the team continues to fine-tune the motorcycle as they shoot for yet another strong result following a fourth-place finish at Morgan Park two weeks ago.

“It all came together today, but we still have a little bit of work to do for tomorrow,” he continued. “We’re looking forward to racing tomorrow, we’re in a good position and we’ll see what tomorrow brings.”

Impressed with Turner’s progression throughout today’s sessions, team co-owner and manager Ben Henry is taking a confident approach to Sunday’s racing at the sixth round of the 2017 season.

“I’m really happy how the second qualifying session went,” Henry said. “We had been struggling up until this point and we tried a lot of different bike set-ups, but it just wasn’t working. We tried something a bit outside of the box and it worked really well for us – we dropped a second and a half, which was really impressive.

“We start on the second row tomorrow, so honestly I think we’ve got something again that can certainly race for the top five and you never know how the race pans out in the end… we could go to the podium again.

“Everyone’s pretty happy, we swapped over to a fresh engine and the bike is really fast, so it’s all coming together at the right time of the weekend and we’re really looking forward to tomorrow now.”

The opening 14-lap race for the premier Superbike class is scheduled at 11:00am local time, with race two taking off at 1:50pm. Visit www.asbk.com.au for further information on the series, including tomorrow’s livestream and television broadcast options.

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