The Pirelli Qatar round of WorldSBK began under floodlights with first honours going to Jordi Torres (Aprilia Racing Team – Red Devils) after an enthralling opening 45 minute session, that saw action aplenty throughout.

With the circuit condition improving as more and more rubber was laid down, the fastest time of the day saw superbike rookie Torres a mere 1.7s away from the 2014 Tissot-Superpole winning time of Davide Giugliano, set last year.

Dominant throughout the first 30 minutes were the Kawasaki Racing Team pairing, with Jonathan Rea taking 2^nd overall, ahead of Tom Sykes making it a KRT 2-3.

4^th overall was Michael van der Mark (Pata Honda World Superbike Team) who strung together half a dozen personal improving laps to edge Chaz Davies (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati SBK Team) and Alex Lowes (Voltcom Crescent Suzuki) who rounded out the top 6.

Randy de Puniet had a solid start to his Qatari weekend in 7^th on the second Voltcom Crescent Suzuki while Leon Haslam (Aprilia Racing Team – Red Devils) and Niccolo Canepa (Althea Racing) completed the top nine.

Sylvain Guintoli (Pata Honda World Superbike Team) suffered a technical failure at turn 4 in the first 10 minutes. The 2014 world champ returned to the garage by scooter, his time of 2.00.418s keeping him 10^th overall at the end of the session.

Xavi Fores (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati SBK Team) had a difficult first session, crashing on in the first 7 minutes as he exited the final turn. The Spaniard was unhurt and was able to re-join the session after some quick repair work by his team, he was classified 13^th after improving on his final lap of the session.

FP2 is due to start at 2300 local time.

In the meantime follow all of the action on the official championship Twitter feed: @WorldSBK