Just as they had in Qatar, Australians
Troy Corser and
Troy Bayliss took control of the opening qualifying session on home soil at Phillip Island, ending the first day at the seaside circuit sitting first and second on the provisional grid.
Corser's Yamaha Motor Italia entry heads the field, the 36-year old - who stands to set a new record for Superbike appearances this weekend - setting a benchmark time of a time of 1min 32.336secs to clinch the overnight pole.
"The track is a bit bumpier each time we go out, even compared to the winter tests we did here," Corser commented, "I'm happy enough with that [time], but we've still got work to do on the settings for race day. It's only Friday, but I'm pretty happy with the performance on this first day."
Fellow Aussie Bayliss was only 0.038secs slower on the Xerox Ducati, unable to find enough time in the 1098 to respond to Corser's best effort, even though he did manage to improve on his previous table-topping time.
"Maybe because of the rain yesterday, there's still not fantastic grip on the track, but we tried a few different things to deal with it," Bayliss revealed, "We only made a few small changes between the free practice and the afternoon qualifying and things are going well, but I'm looking forward to tomorrow and Superpole."
Ducati Xerox team-mate
Michel Fabrizio built on a solid top ten performance in free practice to vault into third position by the end of the qualifying session, the Italian lapping a couple of tenths off the ultimate pace.
"I was really happy with that," he enthused, "We didn't change much between the morning and the afternoon session, as we've been working mainly on the tyre set-up and, for the moment, it's all good. It'll all depend on the weather on Sunday but, so far so good."
