Friday times now decide entry to the Tissot-Superpole 2 session, and the man who leads the way after a day of track time is 2014 Champion Sylvain Guintoli. The only man to set a lap within a 1’30 bracket all day and consequently the fastest on Friday, the Frenchman kept his YZF R1 almost 4 tenths clear of next man on the timesheets, Honda rider Michael Van Der Mark.

With much of the session dedicated to longer runs, the expected dash for the line in the last stage of the session saw a lot of track action. Reigning Champion Jonathan Rea did a long and consistent run as he dueled with Michael Van Der Mark for the top spot in both long run and one lap pace, before Guintoli dropped his time significantly with a lap that proved unbeatable by the end of the session. The rhythm of the reigning Champion, however, looks set to be difficult to beat. Van Der Mark, who lead laps last year in Phillip Island, also looked impressive over a longer run.

The top ten times were very competitive, with Sykes, Hayden, Giugliano and Davies all looking solid around the Australian track. Lorenzo Savadori put in a great lap to join them in the top ten, and the fastest BMW from the morning session, Markus Reiterberger, maintained his title as just that. By virtue of the combined timesheet, the German pips Alex Lowes to a final entry into Tissot-Superpole 2.

Leon Camier remained the fastest Italian motorbike on track on his MV Agusta, with his pace of the morning proving no fluke. Another surprise of the day was Guintoli’s teammate Lowes, who was unable to replicate the pace of his sister YZF R1. After making a mistake near the end of the session, automatic entry to Superpole 2 rested on a final push and the British rider missed out. He does however still have chance to fight for the top ten grid positions by going through Tissot-Superpole 2.

Xavi Fores crashed at T12 and was taken to the medical center, suffering an abrasion on his knee, and is set to be reviewed after FP3. Peter Sebestyen also visited the Medical Center for a laceration on his leg, to be reviewed at the end of Friday. Jordi Torres looks set to be struggling with the injury sustained in testing and will be hoping to gain more pace tomorrow.

WorldSBK will be back on track tomorrow morning once more to see how the pack will shuffle overnight, ahead of Race 1 in the afternoon.