Marco Melandri grabbed his first World Superbike pole since 2011 and his first for Ducati after dipping underneath the Jerez lap record to pip champion Jonathan Rea.
Laptimes came in thick and fast on the initial race-tyre run, with Rea setting a benchmark of 1m40.200s, which was immediately bettered by SP1 pacesetter Leon Camier and Rea‘s Kawasaki team-mate Tom Sykes.
Melandri then shot to the top of the pile with a 1m39.773s at the end of his first run before returning to pitlane for his qualifying tyre.
The timing screens were ablaze with best sector times as the session reached its climax, with the Yamaha duo of Michael van der Mark and Alex Lowes trading provisional pole.
Their time at the head of the timesheets would only last a few seconds, however, as Melandri blasted the old Jerez lap record with a 1m38.960s to take his second WorldSBK pole and his first since Aragon 2011.
Triple world champion Rea was just 0.021 seconds from denying the Italian in second, and was the only other rider underneath the old lap record. Lowes completed the top three on his Pata YZF-R1.
Sykes, still suffering from a hand injury he sustained at Portimao last month, heads row two on the second KRT machine with van der Mark and Milwaukee Aprilia’s Lorenzo Savdori for company.
Eugene Laverty was just a few hundredths from his team-mate‘s time in seventh, while Chaz Davies struggled for pace in ninth ahead of Camier. Roman Ramos completed the top 10 for his best-ever Superpole result.
WorldSBK returnee Sylvain Guintoli made direct passage into SP2 at the end of practice and continued on to qualify the Puccetti Kawasaki 11th – 1.4s off of the pole time. Xavi Fores, who progressed through SP1 with Camier, will start this afternoon’s first race of the weekend 12th.
Ioda’s Leandro Mercado was unable to replicate his Magny-Cours front row heroics at Jerez, and missed the SP2 cut by four tenths of a second in 13th ahead of the Althea BMW duo of Raffele De Rosa and Jordi Torres.
Alessandro Andreozzi was on course to challenge for an SP2 placement on the first flying lap of his second run. But the Guandalini Yamaha rider ran wide exiting the Lorenzo corner while three tenths up on the session best time and was forced to abort his subsequent lap to clean his tyres.
The Italian did get one more lap in, but was unable to produce the same pace as his first effort and was stuck in 16th. Nevertheless, this is still Andreozzi‘s best Superpole result.
Davide Giugliano was top Honda runner in 17th, while team-mate Takumi Takahashi was 21st after a late mistake. Ayrton Badovini, Riccardo Russo and Ondrej Jezek split the Japanese rider from Giugliano.
Dominic Schmitter completed the 22-rider field on his IDM-spec Suzuki GSX-R1000.
