Report - Final Qualifying - Ducati

Troy Bayliss (Ducati Xerox Team) powered back to the front positions at Phillip Island with his 13th career Superpole win. The two-times world champion, out of contention last Saturday in Qatar, showed that he really means business this weekend by first breaking the circuit's best lap in the morning's final qualifying session, leaving the new record at 1m31.887s, and then outpacing James Toseland (Honda) and Troy Corser (Yamaha) in the one-lap battle for pole. Team-mate Lorenzo Lanzi was not so fortunate today, the Italian qualifying in fifth place but he then had a problem with the electronic quick-shifter in Superpole, which dropped him down to tenth.

"We've come quite good in the last couple of days, trying long-runs and working hard to try and find the race tyre, but everyone knows how Phillip Island is" declared Troy. "Conditions can be very different during the day, hot and cold, wet and dry and it was very gusty this afternoon for Superpole. I thought the wind had died down but it was still blowing hard on the inside of turn 1 as I set off. My lap was actually quite messy and I was surprised to take Superpole, my last split can't have been that bad because I was down at the first one. I also ran very wide on Lukey Heights but really I can't complain and I'm very happy to be on pole in front of my friends and family. Both the races are going to be long and difficult tomorrow and we hope for cooler conditions which will help with the duration of the tyres."

"I wanted to do a good Superpole lap because starting up front is always important but unfortunately we had a problem with the electronic shifter so I will be starting from tenth on the grid on the third row" commented Lorenzo. "What can I say? Better today than tomorrow in the race. I was a bit angry with this bad luck because the weekend has already been quite difficult for us, with two crashes and twice I've damaged the bike and made the guys work really hard to repair it. However I feel quite confident about the race tomorrow, the settings are good, we did some good times in practice, now all I have to do is get a good start. Ahead of me there are a few riders who seem to have tyre problems, we are not that badly off so I think I can do a couple of good races tomorrow."