MICHAEL Rutter qualified on pole for Saturday morning’s Macau GP with a lap of 2min 27.545sec.
He was less than a fifth of a second quicker than initial practice pole-setter John McGuinness.
Conor Cummins qualified well n the Tyco Suzuki, fifth quickest, and Dan Kneen was also pleased with his time in ninth place, placing him on the third row of the grid for the race. He said: ‘Will make a few tweaks to the bike for warm-up, very bumpy this year which is making it hard work.’
The full list of qualifiers is as follows:
1, Michael Rutter 2:27.545; 2, John Mcguinness 2:27.763; 3, Martin Jessopp 2:29.287; 4, Gary Johnson 2:29.497; 5, Conor Cummins 2:30.075; 6, Horst Saiger 2:30.203; 7, Simon Andrews 2:30.256; 8, James Storrar 2:30.851; 9, Dan Kneen 2:31.680; 10, James Hillier 2:31.787; 11, Didier Grams 2:31.850; 12, James McBride 2:32.402; 13, Riko Penzkofer 2:33.550; 14, Steve Mercer 2:34.204; 15, Branko Srdanov 2:34.669; 16, Mark Miller 2:35.117; 17, David Johnson 2:35.269; 18, Steve Heneghan 2:38.030; 19, Rafael Paschoalin 2:40.298; 20, Davy Morgan 2:41.138.
Non-qualifiers: Yoshinari Matsushita, Brandon Cretu, Joao Fernandes, Jamie Hamilton, Nuno Caetano, Stephen Thompson, Fernando Costa and Sou Sio Hong.