Lorenzo Zanetti bounced back from a month-long summer break to take fifth place in today’s first qualifying session for the tenth round World Supersport championship event at Nürburgring in Germany today.

The Italian rider is still not at 100% fitness after sustaining injuries in a crash in July but it didn’t stop the 26-year-old from setting a time of 1m59.686s at the 5.137km Nürburgring circuit, less than 0.7s from provisional pole sitter, Sam Lowes.

Despite a promising free practice session this morning, Zanetti’s Pata Honda team-mate Michael van der Mark was twelfth fastest this afternoon and admitted going in the wrong direction with the settings on his Honda CBR600RR.

Lorenzo Zanetti – P5 1m59.686s

My condition is still not perfect and I only restarted normal training one week ago, but I like this track. I lose a lot of time in turn three but it was a good start and I think we can improve things here and in other areas of the track. I had a crash at the end of the session and I must apologise to my team because, although I was fine, the bike is not OK and I made a lot of work for them.

Michael van der Mark – P12 2m00.100s

This morning started really well. We tried a few different things and in the last few laps I was able to do a pretty good time. We still had some changes that we needed though, so we tried them for qualifying but we went in the wrong direction. It was difficult to ride the bike this afternoon so I think we will go back to the earlier settings to make things easier tomorrow.

Pieter Breddels – technical co-ordinator

Michael had a really good free practice this morning but in the afternoon things didn’t quite go his way. We changed the setting a little, but it had more of a negative effect and in the end he was twelfth and couldn’t match his free practice time. We’ll try again tomorrow. Lorenzo did well today and things are looking quite positive, despite his crash on the very last lap today.

2013 World Supersport championship, round nine – Nürburgring, Germany

First qualifying results:

1 Sam Lowes (GBR) Yamaha 1m58.993s

2 Kenan Sofuoglu (TUR) Kawasaki 1m59.107s

3 Fabien Foret (FRA) Kawasaki 1m59.433s

4 Vladimir Leonov (RUS) Yamaha 1m59.677s

5 Lorenzo Zanetti (ITA) Pata Honda 1m59.686s

6 Jack Kennedy (IRL) Honda 1m59.701s 12 Michael van der Mark (NED) Pata Honda 2m00.100s