The first qualifying practice for the World Superbike class saw Michel Fabrizio take provisional pole, the Italian Ducati rider continuing his run of form in practice. Unlike previous sessions, however, Fabrizio did not dominate the session entirely. Fabrizio stood atop the timesheets for the first 40 minutes, but with 18 minutes to go, Johnny Rea leapt ahead of the Italian, the HANNSpree Ten Kate rider the first man to dislodge the Xerox Ducati from the top spot.
It did not last, however, as 10 minutes later, Fabrizio was back again, and half a second faster than his previous best. Fabrizio would not be bested again during the session. Johnny Rea hung on to 2nd, but on his very final lap, Yamaha's Ben Spies shot up the standings from 16th to set the 3rd fastest time. The Yamahas had been languishing outside the top 10 for nearly all the session, but in the dying minutes both Spies and team mate Tom Sykes found a serious improvement. While Spies' time was good enough for a provisional front row, Sykes advanced from 15th up to 8th.
Leon Haslam occupies the last place on the provisional front row, the Stiggy Honda man much improved from Monza. Shinya Nakano heads up the 2nd row on the Aprilia, ahead of Xerox Ducati's Nori Haga and Jakub Smrz on the Guandalini Ducati, with Tom Sykes finishing up the row. Haga is still not at 100%, and has not yet made much of an impression during practice, but he still has two days to go before the race, and he is comfortably on course to make it into Superpole.
The replacement riders were a little more off the pace during the afternoon session, Sheridan Morais the best of them in 12th place, and well ahead of his temporary team mate Broc Parkes, while Gregorio Lavilla finished in 13th, 0.001 behind Morais.
