Reigning World Superbike Champion Carlos Checa is expecting a difficult pair of World Superbike races at Motorland Aragon tomorrow if track conditions are as hot as they have been over the past two days.

The former MotoGP star struggled for vital grip in practice sessions as track temperatures soared to 60°C although he managed to find pace in this afternoon's Superpole session, grabbing a second-row start. The Spaniard is under pressure as he is a relative country mile behind Max Biaggi in the title standings and Aragon is a place where the Aprilia man has a 10mph top speed advantage.

“I am still in a good mood. Today was hard, yes, but we’ve done a great job because, even though we haven’t tested at all here we were still able to go faster than we did last year. We also made a good step up between yesterday and today. We’re losing 20km/h on the straight, we know this, but I’d say that, all things considered, we didn’t do too badly. This morning we were able to work a lot better, gaining both grip and stability in the corners. Now we’ll see what tomorrow’s conditions will be, if it’s hot like this afternoon I foresee two difficult races for us," said the Althea Ducati rider.