Liberty Ducati's Jakub Smrz has kept his place at the head of the World Superbike field at Assen this afternoon, grabbing provisional pole position right at the end of the session to deny Max Biaggi and Marco Melandri.

As with his laps this morning, the Czech rider found pace right at the end of a session which saw a lot of tyre testing by the top men as Smrz managed to lap a quarter of a second quicker than Biaggi on a 1'36.058 which is underneath Jonathan Rea's lap record but still shy of the Irishman's best lap last year of 1'34.944.

Yamaha's Melandri had led the session with half an hour to go after demoting team-mate Eugene Laverty but had to settle for third with the Alstare Suzuki of Michel Fabrizio round out the front row.

A late lap from PBM Kawasaki's Tom Sykes saw him pop into fifth to head row two while Troy Corser, who had been fastest earlier in the hour is sixth with team-mate Leon Haslam next to him and just under a second off the pace. Laverty rounds out row two.

Rea's 1'37.063 was good enough for the head of row three with Noriyuki Haga and Carlos Checa in close attendance while Joan Lascorz is in 12th. Leon Camier is 13th while Chris Vermeeulen had another technical problem which resulted in him only doing 14 laps.