Troy Bayliss (Ducati Infostrada) set his time on his penultimate run during a strange Superpole, which was declared ‘wet’ due to gathering rain clouds, despite the 50 minute session being held on a totally dry track. “I think I qualified with a better time than last year so that shows the bike is working quite good” declared Troy. “I’ve got a set-up now that I just hop on and ride, change a few things now and again, but everything’s working great and I’m really happy. I went out for the final run just to test the front tyre a bit in totally dry conditions even though I had already got pole. Hopefully we have a couple of dry races tomorrow because there’s been just too much rain lately, but I’ve got a good setting whatever the weather.”

Ben Bostrom (Ducati L&M) followed up his Friday provisional pole with an excellent Superpole session, the Californian grabbing second place on the grid behind Bayliss with a confident final run around the 4.265 km track. “I haven’t been up in this position for a long time and it feels good” commented Ben. “We’ve been working on the settings since Monza and things have been going our way a little bit more. We’re going to have a tough fight to win this race but I plan on being up at the front for as much as I can. During Superpole I saw that I had been bumped off the front row so I thought I’d just dig deeper and put my head down to get it back again on my last run. We had a good sticky tyre and it worked really well.”

Ruben Xaus (Ducati Infostrada) finished fifth overall after the two qualifying sessions and then repeated the position in Superpole. “Fifth place is not so bad because starting from the first or second row here is good” declared Ruben. “We kept the front tyre for so many laps and on my last run it didn’t have such a good feeling. The grip at the back was perfect but I went wide a little on some of the lines and used too much track. Every time I went out I improved so that’s important. We didn’t test much with dry conditions so if it’s dry tomorrow, the races are going to be difficult.”