Noriyuki Haga, no doubt still smarting from his Qatar weekend, set about reminding his rivals of his true potential by posting the fastest time of the opening practice session for round two at Phillip Island.
The Japanese ace set a 1min 33.332secs benchmark late in the one-hour session to ease his Yamaha Motor Italia entry to the head of the leaderboard, displacing one of the local favourites, Troy Bayliss, in the process. The Australian took some 20 minutes to set a meaningful time, and only featured in P1 towards the end.
He marginally improved his time after Haga had supplanted him, but the Yamaha man's time was some four-tenths better than Bayliss' best, and the Ducati rider, who won the opening round of the season last weekend, eventually had to settle for third spot overall, as Haga's team-mate, Troy Corser, popped in a 1min 33.549secs lap with minutes remaining to claim second. The top three ended the session split by the same gap as Bayliss found it difficult to improve in the closing stages.
Fourth went to Max Neukirchner, making it three different marques in the leading quartet as the German ran Bayliss close, while the Sterilgarda Ducati pairing of
Ruben Xaus and
Max Biaggi occupied the next couple of places, proving evenly matched. Xaus was the last man under 1min 34secs, with Biaggi clocking 1min 34.168secs in the course of 22 laps, but the lanky Spaniard crashed, fortunately without injury, late in the session and was unable to improve further.
Michel Fabrizio took the second Xerox Ducati to seventh, ahead of Regis Laconi, who recorded an encouraging eighth on the best of the Kawasakis,
Carlos Checa - again the best of the Hondas - and the surprising Jakob Smrz, who took the Guandalini Racing Ducati to an early top ten spot.
That meant that Qatar race winner
Fonsi Nieto failed to make the leading group by less than a tenth, the Spaniard posting the eleventh best time on the second of the Team Alstare Suzukis. Team-mate Yukio Kagayama, as expected will miss the weekend after damaging a collarbone in Qatar.
Smrz, Laconi, Checa,
Makoto Tamada and
Kenan Sofuoglu all took turns to head the field in the early going, before the 'big guns' had their way and took over, leaving Tamada and
WSBK rookie Sofuoglu to settle for 18th and 16th respectively.
That put the pair behind the likes of Russel Holland, Roby Rolfo, Gregorio Lavilla and Lorenzo Lanzi, while reigning British Superbike champion
Ryuichi Kiyonari took 19th, ahead of the two Yamaha France Ipone GMT 94 machines of Sebastien Gimbert and David Checa.
Vittorio Iannuzzo was the only other casualty of the session, the Italian coasting to a halt on track with problems on the Team Pedercini Kawasaki.
To see the first free practice times in full,
click here
