Friday Sep 8 2006
Qualifying

Lausitz (Germany), Friday 8th September: Troy Bayliss (Ducati Xerox) smashed all existing lap records at the Lausitzring circuit as he scorched to a provisional pole position for Sunday's tenth round of the World Superbike championship in Germany. The Australian's time of 1m38.331s was over one second quicker than the 2002 lap record, well inside Lorenzo Lanzi's Superpole time from last year and two-tenths quicker than fellow countryman Troy Corser (Suzuki). Team-mate Lanzi also got his weekend off to a good start, setting sixth quickest time but lapping within two-tenths of a second of Yukio Kagayama (Suzuki) in third place.

"It was a good start to the weekend" declared Troy. "Luckily we got some reasonable weather but it was a little bit cooler than when we tested here in July and the track is in reasonably good condition. The tyre I did the long-run here in the test doesn't seem to be working well now so we used a harder one and still did some pretty good lap times. Already we've got a pretty good solution for the race and just hope to get some good weather again. I did 17 laps on the one tyre and some really good laps towards the end of the run. Then I put a new tyre on before the end of the session and went a little bit faster than what I'd done before. So far it's looking good but we'll take it day by day".



"I am quite pleased with today but seeing as I dominated the weekend last year I thought I could come here and be right there with the leaders this time as well" commented Lorenzo. "However we are in sixth place, which is not bad, two-tenths of a second off third place. We did a lot of work today and tried a number of solutions on the bike. There's still space for improvement tomorrow and that's important. We were able to get a good idea of which tyres to use for the race, both front and back, but tomorrow and Sunday maybe it'll be hotter so the strategies will change. Let's see if we can stay up at the front and not mess up the Superpole this time".

TIMES: 1. Bayliss (Ducati Xerox) 1m38.331s; 2. Corser (Suzuki) 1m38.550s; 3. Kagayama (Suzuki) 1m38.869s; 4. Pitt (Yamaha) 1m38.871s; 5. Muggeridge (Honda) 1m38.948s; 6. Lanzi (Ducati Xerox) 1m39.048s; 7. Haga (Yamaha) 1m39.101s; 8. Toseland (Honda) 1m39.347s; 9. Barros (Honda) 1m39.572s; 10. Walker (Kawasaki) 1m39.591s; etc.

TV COVERAGE: Eurosport (Pan European): Sunday 10 September - 1200 SBK race 1 (live), 1800 race 2 (delayed); British Eurosport (UK): Saturday 9 September - 1630 Superpole (delayed), Sunday 10 September - 1045 SBK race 1 (live), 1900 race 2 (delayed). Eurosport 2 (Pan-European): Sunday 10 September - 1530 SBK race 2 (live). La7 (Italy): Sunday 10 September - 1600 SBK race 1(delayed), 1700 SBK race 2 (delayed).