Britain's Leon Haslam has led a BMW whitewash in the opening World Superbike free practice session at Monza this morning with four out of the five top spots occupied by the German marque and the much-talked about top speed fight currently being won by Jonathan Rea at 207mph.

Haslam leads his fellow ex-Suzuki man by just 0.007s with a lap of 1'43.042 with Marco Melandri less than a tenth further back in a 1'43.171 while Tom Sykes crashed the Bavaria party in fourth on a 1'43.374 a full half-a-second in front of another BMW in the shape of Ayrton Badovini in fifth place.

Melandri set a blistering pace early on, going to the top of the timesheets early on 1'44.316 and it was only ever between the factory BMWs for top spot from there on in. The pair swapped times twice before Haslam did enough with eight minutes to go and the field.

BMW Italia's Fabrizio snuck into second with his final circuit while late laps from Sykes and Badovini saw Eugene Laverty, on the superfast Aprilias, knocked from fourth to sixth place in short order.

Those same laps also saw Honda's Rea drop seventh place and nearly a second off the current pace. Last year's top speed record holder Max Biaggi is in eighth with Nico Canepa the first of the slow-coach Ducatis in ninth. Chaz Davies rounds out the top ten on his satellite Parkingo Aprilia.

Series leader Carlos Checa is behind the Effenbert Ducatis of Jakub Smrz and Maxime Berger in 13th. His very-factory-backed Althea 1198R is some 10mph down on Rea's top speed but the Spaniard has already said he is only expecting top-ten finishes at the Italian track.

John Hopkins was 15th behind Checa's team-mate Davide Guigliano while Lorenzo Zanetti and Sylvain Guintoli finished ahead of Leon Camier in 18th on the Fixi Suzuki. Hiro Aoyama crashed unhurt in the first chicane.

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