The Ducati Xerox team ended the first day of round two of the World Superbike Championship more than satisfied with the way the weekend had begun, despite again being beaten to provisional pole.
Team leader - and current points leader -
Troy Bayliss twice had to give best to Yamaha Motor Italia, but ended the opening qualifying session in P2, just 0.028secs shy of countryman and rival
Troy Corser after struggling for grip on the Phillip Island circuit.
Rain showers earlier in the morning meant that all riders had to cope with less than optimum grip, but that did not seem to deter Bayliss too much as he traded top spot with Corser as the weather and track conditions improved.
"It's all gone well today," the local favourite commented, "Grip on the track could be better - it's not perfect due to the rain earlier - but that will no doubt be better tomorrow.
"We'll try a few different things overnight to sort that out, working on the tyre set-up and so on, but today we haven't really made many changes. We tried a long run, which was worth doing and gave us useful information on the tyres, but we're confident about the direction in which we're heading and we're looking forward to tomorrow."
Team-mate
Michel Fabrizio had good reason to be happy with his performance, posting the seventh fastest time in free practice before vaulting into the top three in qualifying. The Italian, however, agreed that there could be more to come from the 1098 as he, too, had not really explored its set-up possibilities.
"I was already pretty satisfied this morning to be honest, so we changed practically nothing between the practice session and first qualifying this afternoon," he reported, "We worked on improving the tyre set-up and, although there are a few problems with grip, we can work on that during tomorrow's sessions. A change in weather conditions between now and Sunday would, of course, affect how we go, but I'm not too worried about that at the moment."
Second qualifying takes place on Saturday, with the all-important Superpole session later in the day.
