Brands Hatch (UK), Friday 4 August: Troy Bayliss (Ducati Xerox) notched up the quickest time in the opening qualifying session for round 8 of the World Superbike Championship, powering his Ducati 999F06 around the 3.703 mile Brands Hatch circuit in 1m26.272s. His team-mate Lorenzo Lanzi was provisional tenth quickest, but with just one second separating the top 10 in the opening session, the Italian is in a good position to make progress tomorrow.
"It's nice to come back to Brands Hatch, nice to be here with cooler weather than the last few races and we had a good day" declared Troy. "I did quite a lot of sub-1m27s laps and I'm feeling pretty comfortable. Brands is a strange track, you have to make a few changes to the bike because no matter what you ride here, the bikes bottom out with all the braking that's done in dips and uphill, but honestly it's got some good character to it and I love riding around here. We've got a couple of little ideas for tomorrow to improve, nothing special, and we'll work a bit more with the tyres but I don't think we're going to go a lot quicker than that on the race tyre."
"Here things are going much better for me, I've got off to quite a good start even though I still have to improve because for me it's the most difficult track on the calendar" commented Lorenzo. "If I can start from the front two rows of the grid then I'll be happy. It's only the second year on a Superbike here for me, and last year I had just got back on track again after breaking my collarbone, so I haven't done many laps around here. This year I'm already one second quicker but for the moment it's not enough. We'll try and improve tomorrow and get further up the grid. Considering that I did this time on my own, on a track where someone ahead of you can help you a lot, I'm satisfied with my performance but there is room to improve."
Times:1. Bayliss (Ducati Xerox) 1m26.272s;
2. Corser (Suzuki) 1m26.494s;
3. Haga (Yamaha) 1m26.563s;
4. Pitt (Yamaha) 1m26.702s;
5. Muggeridge (Honda) 1m26.741s;
6. Walker (Kawasaki) 1m26.844s;
7. Xaus (Ducati) 1m26.955s;
8. Hill (Yamaha) 1m26.987s;
9. Kagayama (Suzuki) 1m27.165s;
10. Lanzi (Ducati Xerox) 1m27.285s; etc.
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