Vittoriano Guareschi put in a flying last lap to secure provisional pole position in Friday's opening qualifying session for Sunday's seventh round of the World Supersport championship at Misano, San Marino.

The Italian Ducati rider edged out Japanese rider Katsuaki Fujiwara with his best lap in the dying seconds of the one-hour afternoon session. The Ten Kate Honda duo of Pere Riba and Fabian Foret grabbed third and fourth respectively to complete the provisional front row.

Kawasaki's Andrew Pitt heads the second row after taking fifth place with defending champion Jorg Teuchert sixth and Castrol Honda's Chris Vermeulen seventh. Vermeulen commented: "I really like this Misano circuit and, at the moment, I'm still about 0.7s slower than my best lap in testing so I'm optimistic about tomorrow's qualifying session."

Vittorio Iannuzzo completes row two after taking eighth place with wild card rider Nello Russo ninth, Iain MacPherson 10th and championship leader Paolo Casoli 12th.

Australian's Dean Thomas and Karl Muggeridge were 14th and 22nd respectively.

In the morning free practice Muggas and his team believed the problems they were having stemmed from the rear suspension so they tried different settings but none of it improved the handling of the GSX-R.  They then used the afternoon session to try and figure out the problem but have not come up with the solution yet but are confident of curing it on Saturday.  Karl - “We had some complications today and couldn’t really find the right direction for the bike set-up. I couldn’t get any feel for the bike at all, so I didn’t had much confidence in it. There is not much more to say, the result speaks for itself. But we will think about it and try something else tomorrow morning and for sure we find some solution, which will work and improve today’s times.”

Alpha Technik's Adam Fergusson took 17th with his team-mate Markus Barth 29th. BKM Honda's Cristiano Migliorati was 24th while his team-mate, and second placed rider in the championship points standings, Kevin Curtain was 34th, riding with an injured arm after a Friday morning crash.  Shannon Johnson ended Friday 35th quickest.

Friday's World Supersport qualifying times: 
1 Vittoriano Guareschi, Italy (Ducati) 1m 38.520s, 
2 Katsuaki Fujiwara, Japan (Suzuki) 1m 38.976s, 
3 Pere Riba, Spain (Honda) 1m 39.011s, 
4 Fabien Foret, France (Honda) 1m 39.119s, 
5 Andrew Pitt, Australia (Kawasaki) 1m 39.139s, 
6 Jorg Teuchert, Germany (Yamaha) 1m 39.160s, 
7 Chris Vermeulen, Australia (Castrol Honda) 1m 39.178s, 
8 Vittorio Iannuzzo, Italy (Suzuki) 1m 39.252s, 
9 Nello Russo, Italy (Yamaha) 1m 39.320s, 
10 Iain MacPherson, GB (Kawasaki) 1m 39.522s.