FIM Superbike World Championship - Imola Superpole

One of the most exciting Superpoles of the season saw Ducati Xerox's Michel Fabrizio power to his first ever career success at the Imola circuit in Italy. The man from Rome clinched the pole with a time of 1 minute 47.735 seconds right on the final lap of the session, taking it out of the hands of Ben Spies (Yamaha World Superbike), quickest until then, by just 0.043 of a second. The first row was completed by two of the other championship front-runners, Jonathan Rea (Hannspree Ten Kate Honda) and Noriyuki Haga (Ducati Xerox), with the gap between the four (0.150 secs) one of the smallest in WSB history.

Michel Fabrizio: "I'm really happy, I wanted this Superpole at all costs, and it's even more satisfying to get it at home. Maybe I should only do the Italian championship as I got my first win at Monza and my first pole here! In any case tomorrow it'll be a great battle between us young guys, because our race pace is pretty similar, so I feel sure we'll have some fun tomorrow."

Ben Spies: "It was a good session for us but I kind of blew it in the last section, making a big mistake and that cost us, but I'm on the front row which is where we need to be. All the top guys are on the front row, which is how it should be, none of us will be hanging around so let's hope we have some fun tomorrow."

Jonathan Rea: "The pace there in the afternoon was fast and we just missed out a little. In the last session and the last qualifier made a big mistake and didn't quite resurrect that so there wasn't enough time left. Anyway we've got a good race set-up tomorrow, I'm really happy, the guys have done a marvelous job, we've got so many new things to try and every week the package is getting better and better."

The second row sees Jakub Smrz (Guandalini Ducati) in fifth, followed by Max Biaggi (Aprilia Racing), while Shane Byrne (Sterilgarda Ducati) was in seventh ahead of Marco Simoncelli (Aprilia Racing), the Italian taking his RSV4 machine to a brilliant eighth place on his WSB debut. Troy Corser (BMW) will start from row 3 in ninth after being eliminated from Superpole 2 by a fraction. Lorenzo Lanzi (DFX Ducati) looked promising on the third row, while Carlos Checa (Hannspree Ten Kate Honda) could only manage 13th. It was a negative day for Suzuki Alstare Brux with both riders Yukio Kagayama and Karl Muggeridge starting from row 5.