Fixi Suzuki's Leon Camier recommenced where he left off in testing at Phillip Island, topping the first day's timesheet on lap-record race but Leon Haslam was under two-tenths behind on the Pata Honda.
Camier was half a second inside Max Biaggi's existing best race time set last year on a 1'31.243 and approaching Carlos Checa's pole record from 2011 of 1'30.882. The former BSB Champion had to get used to differently-feeling bike as he said it wasn't quite the same after he launched it into some trees last week.
“We needed to change some stuff after the bike had been re-built, so this morning was there no big hurry to push from the start. We changed the bike a bit in the lunch-break, because unfortunately it didn’t quite feel the same as it did before I smashed it up last week," said Camier.
"The feeling came back and we also had to change quite a bit because of the heat, I did the same lap-time in the cooler conditions last week as I did in the heat today, so I think we did a pretty good job. It’s very close at the top, so it doesn’t really count for anything, because the race will be difficult and the other guys have got some time to perfect what they’ve got. We are in quite good shape at the moment, but we know there is still a lot to do for the rest of this week.”
Michel Fabrizio put the Red Devils Aprilia in third place a further 0.05s back while Factory Aprilia's Eugene Laverty was fastest in the morning session on a 1'31.730 but slipped back to fourth in the afternoon on 1'31.401, just edging out Marco Melandri by 00.33s.
Former champion Carlos Checa is fully recovered from the blocked intestine that ruled him out of last week's test and set the sixth-fastest time on a still-developing Ducati Panigale. The Spaniard went round in 1'31.523 while 2012 team-mate Davide Guigliano put in the Alstare Aprilia in seventh.
Sylvain Guintoli picked himself up from a crash in the morning and another in the afternoon to set eighth quickest while Jonathan Rea, who also slid off, was ninth, ahead of 2012 series runner-up Tom Sykes, who was eight-tenths off the pace. Chaz Davies was 11th and only 0.016s behind the Kawasaki man.