Castrol Honda's Jonathan Rea has stormed to the top of the World Superbike qualifying timesheets this afternoon, stealing provisional pole from under the nose of this morning's fastest man Carlos Checa with Leon Haslam's BMW S1000RR in third place.
In only his second race back from injury, Rea obliterated Checa's year-old lap record of 1'48.877 with a 1'48.241 and is only a tenth of a second outside the circuit best lap, again Checa's, with two more hours of track time left before Superpole.
Checa had lapped in 1'48.440 to take top spot with Haslam's 1'48.701 good enough to just about bag second ahead of Alstare Suzuki's Michel Fabrzio but Rea pipped them all and pushed the former works Ducati man back to the outside of the front row.
PBM Kawasaki's Tom Sykes pulled himself into sixth with 15 minutes left to run but just couldn't make it in front of Marco Melandri whose 1'48.844 was only six-tenths off the pace. Sylvain Guintoli put his Liberty Ducati in the middle of row two, which was rounded off by Maxine Berger's Liberty Ducati.
Noriyuki Haga, on the Pata Aprilia, took ninth place just ahead of Jakub Smrz, wildcards Federico Sandi and Alex Polita while Leon Camier finished in 13th. Eugene Laverty is having something of a disaster in 18th and is 1.8s off the pace.
