It wasn’t an easy day for Bastien Mackels, the Belgian star rider for Wilbers-BMW. The local hero found himself in an unfamiliar role. He was battling for thousandths of a second to finish ahead of his teammates from the alpha Racing-Van Zon-BMW squad. But even on Mackels’ home track, there was no beating the Ukrainian rider Ilya Mikhalchik . A mere 0.041 seconds separated them. Mikhalchik had crashed twice during practice, but that didn’t faze him. Mackels, however, didn’t dwell on his fate for long and said, “Tomorrow is what counts, when the two races take place.”
When it comes to Mikhalchik and Mackels, team manager Werner Daemen has mixed feelings. He is a fellow countryman of Mackels, has previously signed the 32-year-old, and is friends with him. “Bastien isn’t just an ordinary opponent to me—he’s also a friend.” But now Daemen is Mikhalchik’s team manager. Can the Ukrainian be compared to Mackels? What’s different? “The talent,” Daemen blurts out openly and honestly. In his early 20s, Mikhalchik is still just at the very beginning of his career. With Julian Puffe , Daemen has another young rider from his team on the front row of the grid.
Stefan Kerschbaumer takes the second spot. Although the official Yamaha MGM factory team does not have a top rider in the IDM Superbike 1000 class at Zolder, the brand is still holding its own. Kerschbaumer races for the private MPB Racing Team. Daniel Kartheininger, who also races for MPB, qualified in fifth place. It comes as a surprise that the newlywed Yamaha rider is performing so well. He reports that he has finally found the last half-second that had previously been missing.
Dominic Schmitter (HPC Power) and Toni Finsterbusch (Suzuki Mayer) are the top Suzuki riders in 7th and 9th place. Finsterbusch ran like clockwork. He posted the exact same best time in both qualifying sessions, down to the thousandth of a second: exactly 1:33.512 min. While that wasn’t enough to be the top rider for the brand, the Saxon says: “Dominic can put in a fast lap on command. I can’t do that, but I’m more consistent.”
Squeezing in between the two GSX-R 1000s was Jan Halbich (Honda Holzhauer Racing Promotion), the CBR 1000 RR rider from the Czech Republic who has already stood on the podium at Oschersleben. Kawasaki is still waiting for such a result. Mathieu Gines (Weber Motos) and Lucy Glöckner (Kawasaki Schnock Team Motorex) will start from 11th and 12th positions tomorrow. A lot can still happen.