Jason O’Halloran claimed pole position for the first British Superbike Championship race of the weekend at Snetterton, though the McAMS Yamaha rider's spotlight was stolen by new team-mate Tito Rabat after a mighty lap good enough for the front row.

With O'Halloran on pole and ex-MotoGP rider Rabat taking third, the front row is completed by Glenn Irwin (BeerMonster Ducati) slotting in between the two R1s.

But it was a disaster for the LAMI OMG Racing Yamaha pairing of Kyle Ryde and Ryan Vickers, with Ryde only managing 16th and Vickers crashing early on to end up 18th.

Q1 got proceedings underway, and it was Rabat, Danny Kent, Luke Mossey, Jack Kennedy, Charlie Nesbitt and Tom Neave who progressed, Rabat posting a strong lap of 1’48.334, but it was O’Halloran who put the hammer down first in Q2 with a stunning 1’47.111s.

That put him four tenths of a second quicker than Rabat, who continued to get quicker with each lap, with Tommy Bridewell on the second BeerMonster Ducati, Nesbitt and Josh Brookes next up on the leaderboard, but Vickers crashed out at Agostini on just his second lap.

Irwin was the first to respond to O’Halloran’s flyer with a lap of 1’47.373 moving him up to second and a quarter of a second adrift of his Yamaha rival. Rabat, Bridewell, Kennedy and Nesbitt now ran in third to sixth.

Brookes then became the fifth rider to lap in the 1’47 bracket albeit almost a second behind O’Halloran’s lap which was looking stronger and stronger as the session wore on. Ryde, meanwhile, found himself back in 12th and although Leon Haslam was down in 18th, he jumped up to fifth with two minutes to go.

O’Halloran put in a lap of 1’47.153 late on to ram home his dominance and his earlier time remained unchallenged as he claimed pole ahead of Irwin and Rabat with Bridewell holding on to fourth ahead of Brookes and Haslam. Nesbitt, Kent, Kennedy and Danny Buchan completed the top ten.