Report - First Qualifying - Ducati

The 2007 World Superbike season got underway today for the Ducati Xerox Team with fifth and sixth quickest times respectively for Lorenzo Lanzi and Troy Bayliss in first qualifying in Qatar. Times were almost one second off the pace of last December's test session, but today's qualifying session was a hard-fought affair as the top six riders were all within half a second of each other.

Double world champion Bayliss took a bit of time to settle into the rhythm and was not entirely happy with his first day's performance.

"Everything is not going so bad, but we're having just a few little problems like getting the bike to do exactly what we want from when we tested here last time" he declared. "The times are not really so bad, and we're not so far off the front. It's just that everyone's riding really well at the moment and I'm missing a little something and in these conditions it doesn't take much to be down a couple of places because everyone's going very fast. We've got a few things to think about, especially at the front where we're struggling a bit but we'll try them tomorrow and hopefully I'll be a bit further up at the front.

Lorenzo Lanzi on the other hand was enthusiastic about his fifth place on the grid and was confident there was more to come.

"That wasn't bad for first qualifying but I can see that our rivals have got a good race pace, especially Max, Nori and James. We had a few problems like last year when it started to get warmer in the afternoon and for our twin-cylinder Ducati these are the worst possible conditions because you start to slide around at the rear. I'm happy that we've still got a few more things to try and I'm sure we can set a good race pace seeing as we can make a few more changes to the set-up. As for me, I feel much better after the winter, calm and relaxed, we've done a lot of testing and that has helped me to get back into form."