Reigning World Superbike Champion Carlos Checa managed to fight it out with Tom Sykes for provisional pole at the Magny-Cours this afternoon despite struggling for top speed compared to the four-cylinder bikes.

The Spaniard's Althea Ducati is six kph down on Sykes and 12kph slower than Marco Melandri's BMW, and says the deficit is making is very difficult to overtake on the brakes off the back straight, somewhere that is usually a good spot. Checa made some changes to take advantage of the warmer conditions in first qualifying, finding increased stability and grip in the process.

“We made some changes between this morning’s session and the qualifying and things went a lot better for us this afternoon. We tried the tyres that we have available and have an idea of the direction to take for the races. I have seen that it’s hard to stick with the four-cylinders on the straight which would normally be a good place to overtake so we’ll have to find other points where we can get close enough to try," said the ex-MotoGP man.

"The stability and grip were better this afternoon and so I’m more confident. We need to manage the tyre situation as best we can, this is one of our strong points, and see what we can do.”