Troy Bayliss: "It's a pretty good start to the weekend"

Troy Bayliss set the pace in first qualifying for the European Round of the World Superbike Championship at a cold and damp Donington Park today. The Australian's time of 1'32"333s was well inside the long-standing best lap set by Neil Hodgson in 2000 although it is the first time World Superbikes have raced at Donington since 2001.

"It's a pretty good start to the weekend," declared Troy. "This morning we had very mixed conditions, around 6°, and the track was quite wet. We did OK but were a little bit hesitant and had to work our way into it. This afternoon the track finally arrived dry towards the end of the session and the times were quite good considering we hadn't had any dry track time. I'm confident tomorrow if we get some good conditions we can go quite a bit faster, but overall the bike's feeling good and I'm happy on it so we'll move on to tomorrow."

Although there were still some damp patches round the 4.023 kilometre circuit, Troy Corser also managed to beat the current lap record by over half a second, setting the second fastest lap time of the session.

"I'm pretty happy despite the poor conditions. Apart from my crash, everything worked out pretty well really! The team have done a lot of work back at the workshops since the last race and the bike really has come on. The torque has been improved and there's no delay now when I'm on/off the throttle. Also the mapping has been improved and generally the whole package feels better. Donington is not a top speed track, so I'm not worried about that at all, but it's a track that's all about corner speed and that's what we've got to concentrate on."

"I was lucky I crashed the way I did and happy to escape without any injury. It happened at Craner Curves when the back came round and the bike tried to highside me, I saved that part, but then I was on the wet grass and there was no way back! I went over the bars and head-butted the ground. Fortunately the earth was soft there, so I got away with it OK. The tyres seem to work better in cooler conditions. We'll have to wait and see how it is tomorrow and Sunday."

Ruben Xaus set an impressive third best time at this first qualifying sessión: "It's good to start the week-end this way. I felt good immediately on the motorbike so I stepped on the accelerator without any risk. Now we need to confirm the performance, and I ask the team some changes in order to allow me to face the bends better: if you come out enough sharp there, it's easier to do a good time. Tomorrow will be a very important day because we will have to choose the race tyres. We didn't do the choice today because I tried to not force myself too much. I come from a week with flu and I'm pretty weak still, but there won't be problem of stamina at all during the races".

Yorkshireman James Toseland started his first home race of the season as he means to go on. He secured a succession of fast lap times during the 45-minute session before taking a tactical decision to save his supply of dry tyres and continue on wets to the end. After spending much of the time in the top two, he finished fourth fastest with a best lap of 1'33.692.

James Toseland: "The session was pretty good for me. It was drying up at the end there but even in the damp conditions I was second quickest at one point and that's unusual for me so I was pretty pleased. The new package we have on the bike is giving me a lot of confidence even in these conditions. We were going to put on new tyres towards the end to go for pole position but we know the weather forecast is OK for tomorrow and Sunday so we've held some back. We've got plenty of tyres for the weekend so hopefully we can get the best out of them and I can concentrate on winning."

Yukio hit towards the end of the qualifying session and which caused him to suffer a heavy fall, knocking him out for a few minutes He was taken to the Medical Centre for a check up and X-rays, but luckily suffered no broken bones or any other injuries apart from a sore back. His team mate Max Biaggi took today very carefully, using the two sessions to find a good base set-up for his GSX-R1000 K7, before beginning to push hard.

"The conditions today were not easy and then I crashed!" said Yukio. "It happened at Craner Curves, when I hit a small damp patch on the track and lost control. I hit my head and knocked myself out for a little while, but there were no other injuries. My back is very sore, but I'm sure it'll be OK after a good sleep. I would like to race this weekend, but it is not up to me. We shall see what happens in the morning."

"Today was not so easy," confessed Max Biaggi. "I used the time to try and find a good base set-up for my bike. We had no data from here, so we had to start at the beginning and work our way through quite a few things. In these conditions it is difficult to try and choose tyres for the race because conditions could be very different tomorrow or Sunday. This afternoon, when the track was half wet and half dry was tricky and I didn't want to push too hard and crash. A few times today I made small mistakes breaking too hard and having to run a bit wide. That was probably because we had some clutch problems and that was probably why I couldn't go any faster at the end of the qualifying session."

Qualifying times: