Bayliss Continues To Set The Pace In Qatar Testing - December 20th 2006

Troy Bayliss (Ducati Xerox Team) continues to set the pace at the Losail circuit as the final Pirelli winter testing session of the year moves into its second day.

The two-times World Superbike champion improved by almost two seconds to finish the session with a time of 1m58.9s. Even though the times are dropping rapidly, the main point of focus for all the five manufacturer development teams present in Qatar is to find a tyre that will last an entire race distance, not an easy aim given the relatively cool weather and windy, sandy track conditions.

"Today went well again because the track was a little bit better" commented Troy. "We got through a lot of stuff and tested some rear tyres in the afternoon. I actually used the same settings as last year and we found a couple of tyres we could use for the race but they're not lasting long in these conditions. My time today was a just a couple of tenths slower than my best ever time here on qualifying tyres. Tomorrow I don't reckon we'll go much faster but I'd like to find a bit more consistency and then we'll be looking good".

Lorenzo Lanzi knocked one second off his time to end the day with the fifth quickest time of the day. "Today everything went quite well and towards the end of the day I managed to set some interesting times on race tyres" declared Lorenzo. "The conditions are more or less the same as yesterday but you can lap well. The only thing is that in these conditions this track totally destroys the rubber so we have to work a lot on the settings to find the right tyre. Now I feel much more at ease on this track and I have managed to lap in a good pace".

Day 2 Times (provided by Pirelli):

1. 1. Bayliss (Ducati Xerox) 1m58.9s
2. 2. Toseland (Honda) 1m59.1s
3. 3. Nieto (Kawasaki) 1m59.5s
4. 4. Corser (Yamaha) 1m59.7s
5. 5. Lanzi (Ducati Xerox) 2m00.3s
6. 6. Biaggi (Suzuki) 2m00.4s
7. 7. Haga (Yamaha) 2m00.6s
8. 8. Laconi (Kawasaki) 2m00.6s
9. 9. Kagayama (Suzuki) 2m00.7s
10. 10. Rolfo (Honda) 2m02.2s