Troy Corser wrestled the initiative back off
Troy Bayliss in second qualifying for the latest round of the World Superbike Championship at Misano after an impressive last gasp effort saw him claim provisional pole position.
The honour of going last in this afternoon's Superpole had looked as though it would go the way of Bayliss after the championship leader retained his advantage at the top of the leaderboard for the majority of the session.
However, despite lowering his best time to go four tenths quicker than anyone else, Corser produced a mighty lap to usurp Bayliss and give him no opportunity to respond. Bayliss is still well positioned to score another pole position at Ducati's home circuit though as it looks increasingly likely that honours will be battled for between the two Australians this weekend.
Having spent much of the session struggling to build on his best time from yesterday, Jakub Smrz also left it remarkably late to pop back up the order to third on the Guandalini Ducati, ahead of
Regis Laconi, who completed a slightly unusual provisional front row in fourth on the PSG-1 Kawasaki.
Michel Fabrizio made it three Ducatis in the top five, a feat that Honda could only dream of after a terrible session that almost saw them miss out on Superpole completely. Indeed,
Carlos Checa spent a large majority of the session outside the top 16 before finally moving up the order in the latter stages.
However, save for
Karl Muggeridge in 16th, with Ten Kate's
Ryuichi Kiyonari 22nd and
Kenan Sofuoglu 24th, no other Honda rider would make it through to Superpole.
It was a patchy session for Suzuki too, although Max Neukirchner and
Fonsi Nieto made progress over first qualifying to put themselves in with a shout of a front row in seventh and eighth. Rounding out the top ten, Max Biaggi could not quite keep up his form from first qualifying in ninth, while Sterilgarda team-mate Xaus was tenth.
