Tom Sykes blasted the Misano lap record to take his 40th career World Superbike pole position, the Yorkshireman 0.328 seconds clear of the field.
Sykes hit the ground running in first practice for the Rimini WorldSBK round on Friday, but a change in set-up and a crash in the afternoon saw him drop behind Kawasaki team-mate Jonathan Rea heading into Saturday’s action.
After the initial runs on race tyres, it was Rea who led the way and he shot to the top of the pile again on his first qualifying tyre lap with a 1m33.990s.
Briefly holding the outright lap record, Sykes denied Rea his third pole of the season when he posted a 1m33.662s on his penultimate flying lap.
Ducati’s Chaz Davies ran an experimental rear wheel cover, first trialled in in third practice, on his qualifying tyre run. But it did not give him any real gain in lap time, with team-mate Marco Melandri pipping him to third at the chequered flag.
Michael van der Mark led the Yamaha charge in fifth spot, with MV Agusta’s Leon Camier shuffling compatriot Alex Lowes to seventh. Barni Racing’s Xavi Fores will line up eighth after Jordi Torres had his best lap cancelled, dropping the BMW rider to ninth.
Milwaukee Aprilia’s Eugene Laverty heads the fourth row from Randy Krummencaher and Roman Ramos, both of whom making their first appearance in SP2 after topping the first 15-minute shoot-out session.
Lorenzo Savadori and SMR seemingly felt their position inside the top two was safe as SP1 neared its conclusion, but were caught out by the surprise improvements of Ramos and Krummenacher.
Unable to improve on his 1m35.708s when he returned to track for a last-gasp lap, Savadori missed SP2 by just 0.007s and will start 13th. Tati Mercado and Raffaele De Rosa, who crashed in the closing stages, complete the fifth row.
Ricardo Russo has shown an upturn in pace this weekend on his Guandalini Yamaha and secured his best qualifying result of the season in 16th ahead of Alex De Angelis and the struggling Honda of Stefan Bradl.
WorldSBK returnee Fabio Menghi will line up 19th on his VFT Ducati for his first race in almost a year, the Italian joined by the Grillini duo of Ayrton Badovini and Ondrej Jezek at the back of the grid.
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