Troy Corser an early contender on day one in Brno

Troy Corser (Yamaha Motor Italia WSB Team) enjoyed a competitive start to his Brno race weekend by scoring second best time behind local favourite Jakub Smrz, on the recently resurfaced 5.403km Brno circuit.

Corser's early pace has already seen him under the previous circuit best, with one more qualifying session plus Superpole on Saturday to determine his final grid position.

Noriyuki Haga (Yamaha Motor Italia WSB Team) was held back in his early laps by a niggling fault with his machine's electronics package and lost him track time that held back his ultimate provisional qualifying position to 12th.

The weather conditions remained dry through first qualifying, despite some dark clouds skirting the track, and both Corser and Haga would prefer dry conditions for day two, to complete their pre-race set-up work in consistent conditions.

David Checa (Yamaha GMT94) is in a provisional Superpole qualifying slot, 14th, one place ahead of his brother Carlos.

Shinichi Nakatomi (Team YZF Yamaha) was 17th today, Sebastien Gimbert (Yamaha GMT94) 19th, making Superpole entry a real possibility for each rider after the final official qualifying session.

"The settings feel reasonably good already and I think the grip from the track is starting to come in more, with rubber being put onto the track. I think sand is washing onto the track when it rains so I hope it doesn't rain tonight. I think there will be more life from the tyres as well, although the front tyre is still a bit of a problem for race distance.

But we still have something to try in the set-up of the bike to help that a little. There is a lot of pressure on the front tyre here, more than at any other track, maybe. And there is a lot of heavy braking going into corners here. Up the steep hill our bike is pretty good compared to the other guys I was on track with, so I'm quite happy so far."

"This morning we had problems with the electronics and that stopped us from making a lot of laps and that has stopped us from making good lap times. So it has taken time to try and catch up.

We started with different settings from last year, and we tried another setting this afternoon, and finally we found a good feeling. Not enough for the race yet, so I hope tomorrow we find even better settings. For me, the track feels the same as last year, maybe it is more slippery."

"Troy is up front and Nori can get there two, so we will see how we go tomorrow. Nori lost some time when we had a few problems this morning but we are confident because this is still only Friday.

Our tyre choice here is critical, but we have already found one rear that works well. Now we need to find a front one. But overall we are OK. The riders feel different things from the track surface but that is because they have very different riding styles!"

2008 WSB Czech Republic - Brno 18/07/2008 Qualifying 1

1 Jakub Smrz Ducati CZE 1'59.125

2 Troy Corser Yamaha AUS 1'59.493

3 Troy Bayliss Ducati AUS 1'59.517

4 Max Biaggi Ducati ITA 1'59.747

5 Lorenzo Lanzi Ducati ITA 1'59.850

6 Fonsi Nieto Suzuki ESP 1'59.926

7 Michel Fabrizio Ducati ITA 2'0.024

8 Niccolo Canepa Ducati ITA 2'0.131

9 Max Neukirchner Suzuki GER 2'0.179

10 Ruben Xaus Ducati ESP 2'0.196

11 Yukio Kagayama Suzuki JPN 2'0.361

12 Noriyuki Haga Yamaha JPN 2'0.371

13 Roberto Rolfo Honda ITA 2'0.384

14 David Checa Yamaha ESP 2'0.388

15 Carlos Checa Honda ESP 2'0.424

17 Shinichi Nakatomi Yamaha JPN 2'0.552

19 Sebastien Gimbert Yamaha FRA 2'1.170  

- Yamaha -