Report - Final Qualifying - Ducati

The first Superpole session of the 2007 World Superbike championship was a tough one for the Ducati Xerox Team at the Losail circuit in Qatar with riders Lorenzo Lanzi and Troy Bayliss posting fifth and sixth quickest times in the one-lap dash.

"Well, that was something different!" declared Troy about his Superpole. "I think everyone will be happy to see that but not us! We haven't been at our best all weekend actually. It's really strange because the last test I did here I did a 58.1 and now the best I've done all weekend has been a 59.5 with exactly the same setting from last time. We're just having some difficulty in getting comfortable on the bike, my Superpole lap didn't feel good and it just didn't happen. That's it really, now we put it behind us and hopefully we can do a good race tomorrow. We knew it was going to be a hard weekend but it's just looking a bit harder than normal. Honestly my long run is the only good thing I've done this weekend, 10 laps in 1m59s, so that's a good sign and I'm feeling pretty confident that I will be OK in the second part of the race."

"I really hoped to get on the front row of the grid because all weekend I've always been in the top 4 and it was important for the start" declared Lorenzo. "Now Troy and I are both on the second row, we have to hope for a good start and do the first few laps well. We're pretty clear on the choice of tyres, we'll just have to see how they work tomorrow and what sort of weather conditions there are because the cooler it is the better it is for us. The bike set-up feels OK for the race, unfortunately I made an error in my Superpole lap at the final corner and lost those vital tenths of a second that would have put me on the front row of the grid."