Fabrizio dominates opening day of qualifying at Monza

Ducati Xerox's Michel Fabrizio dominated the opening day of World Superbike qualifying at the Autodromo Nazionale di Monza. After setting the quickest time in the morning's free practice, the Italian then did the same in the afternoon qualifying session to record a time of 1 minute 45.447 seconds. Fabrizio strung together a series of quick laps at the end of the session, clearly staking an early claim for the wins on Sunday. Tom Sykes (Yamaha World Superbike) put in a quick lap at the end of the session to prevent a Ducati 1-2, the British rider heading the points leader Noriyuki Haga by just three-hundredths of a second. The provisional front row was completed by another British rider, Jonathan Rea, who took his Hannspree Ten Kate Honda to fourth place.

Fifth and sixth slots on the second row of the grid went to the competitive Suzuki pairing of Max Neukirchner and Yukio Kagayama, the only other riders under the 1'46" mark. Once again Superbike qualifying proved to be a hard-fought affair, with 13 riders separated by less than a second. Seventh quickest time went to Ben Spies (Yamaha World Superbike),who finished ahead of Max Biaggi on the Aprilia. BMW once again placed its two riders in the top 15, with Ruben Xaus two-hundredths of a second ahead of his team-mate Troy Corser. Shinya Nakano's difficult moment continued for Aprilia with the Japanese rider crashing out in the afternoon.

Haga, like several other top contenders, tested at the Autodromo recently, and should therefore be completely prepared for whatever awaits him at Monza this weekend. "We did some testing at Monza recently and it was my first chance to ride the 1198 there," said Haga.

"Although we had a few problems, I know these will be resolved for the race weekend. I am already really excited about the Monza race. I am not thinking about the possibility of winning the championship, I just think about each race, taking one weekend at a time. Of course at Monza I hope to win again, especially because it is my home circuit!"

Tom Sykes Tom Sykes, Yamaha World Superbike Team (2nd, 1'45.758) "A fairly decent day to day to be honest, we came here with a big change from the test we had here which has taken a fair bit of balancing but I think we've done it. Overall I'm very happy with my race tyres, we're doing consistent fast laps over race distance so I'm confident in the team's ability and tomorrow I think we'll come out even stronger. I'm going to have a good sleep tonight and come back tomorrow with a fresh head and be even better!"

Ben Spies Ben Spies, Yamaha World Superbike Team (7th, 1'46.013) "It was a really good session for us. We pretty much found our race tyres , we only ran one set for the whole session and put in some really good lap times. We weren't really worried about fast lap times today, we just wanted to get consistent laps so we should be good for Sunday. It's an 18 lap race and our fastest lap today was the 22nd one so it's looking good. The bike's working really well so we'll step it up tomorrow and see what happens."