Friday Mar 30 2007
Qualifying

Donington (UK), Friday 30 March: Troy Bayliss (Ducati Xerox Team) set the pace in first qualifying for the European Round of the World Superbike Championship at a cold and damp Donington Park today. The Australian's time of 1m32.333s was well inside the long-standing best lap set by Neil Hodgson in 2000 although it is the first time World Superbikes have raced at Donington since 2001. Team-mate Lorenzo Lanzi was less fortunate, crashing in the one-hour session and ending up outside the top 16.

"It's a pretty good start to the weekend" declared Troy. "This morning we had very mixed conditions, around 6, and the track was quite wet. We did OK but were a little bit hesitant and had to work our way into it. This afternoon the track finally arrived dry towards the end of the session and the times were quite good considering we hadn't had any dry track time. I'm confident tomorrow if we get some good conditions we can go quite a bit faster, but overall the bike's feeling good and I'm happy on it so we'll move on to tomorrow."


"I could have done without that crash at the entrance to Coppice when I lost the front", commented Lorenzo. "I haven't been here for six years and I'm finding the conditions quite difficult. Tomorrow the forecast looks better and today I just didn't want to take any risks. However I feel that potentially I can go a lot quicker because the bike set-up is pretty good. The crash led us astray a bit because we then made the wrong choice of front tyre, the softer one, and the track started to dry out and I was unable to set a quick time. Tomorrow I'll try and improve, especially in the last part of the circuit from the chicane to the final hairpin."

Times: 1. Bayliss (Ducati Xerox) 1m32.333s; 2. Corser (Yamaha) 1m32.817s; 3. Xaus (Ducati) 1m33.646s; 4. Toseland (Honda) 1m33.692s; 5. Laconi (Kawasaki) 1m33.729s; 6. Muggeridge (Honda) 1m34.203s; 7. Kagayama (Suzuki) 1m34.549s; 8. Haga (Yamaha) 1m34.553s; 9. Biaggi (Suzuki) 1m34.593s; 10. Rolfo (Honda) 1m35.363s; ... 17. Lanzi (Ducati Xerox) 1m36.735s.

TV Coverage : Eurosport (Europe): Sunday 1 April, 1100 GMT race 1 (live). British Eurosport (UK): Saturday 31st March, 2000 Superpole (delayed). Sunday 1 April, 1200 race 1 (live), 1530 race 2 (live). Eurosport 2 (Europe): Saturday 31 March, 1500 Superpole (live). Eurosport (Italy): Sunday 1 April, 1300 race 1 (live). La7 (Italy): Saturday 31 March, 1650 Superpole (live), Sunday 1 April, 1250 race 1 (live), 1620 race 2 (live).