Max Neukirchner (Alstare Suzuki) powered to a second Superpole win of the season in his home round of the HANNspree FIM Superbike World Championship at the Nurburgring.

The 25-year-old from Stollberg in the former East Germany, set an incredible time of 1 minute 55.471 seconds around the 5.137 km circuit on his Suzuki GSX-R1000.

The remainder of the front row was made up of riders from three different manufacturers; Troy Bayliss (Ducati Xerox) was three-tenths of a second down in second place, followed by Carlos Checa (Hannspree Ten Kate Honda) and Noriyuki Haga (Yamaha Motor Italia WSB), who ten days ago was undergoing surgery on a broken collarbone.

Max Neukirchner: "It was an unbelievable lap, I was really fast. I'm so happy for my team, they did a great job this weekend for my home race and to help me get my second pole position of the season. I hope the weather will be fine tomorrow and a lot of fans come here with the German flag and say ‘go go go, Max!"

Troy Bayliss: "All the practices have been going quite well for us, when I saw Carlos's time I was pretty surprised and I thought that's around where my limit is going to be. I didn't expect Max to do such a good job, that was incredible the lap he pulled out. We're hoping that it's going to be a nice day tomorrow because the conditions have been quite mixed already. Although we're looking good in those situations, we'd love it to be a dry track because I think there's going to be a really good turn-out here. The Nurburgring is a lovely place with a great atmosphere so I'm looking forward to it."

Carlos Checa: "Here we didn't find the grip we had in America but we've been working on the bike to find more mechanical feeling with these tyres and finally it worked a bit better. I was confident with that feeling even with the qualifying tyres and on my Superpole lap the time came very good, then of course Troy and especially Max did a great lap time. We are on the first row and it's very positive, I think we'll catch up the pace and we'll be looking good for tomorrow."

Fifth place went to Michel Fabrizio (Ducati Xerox), just a fraction away from another front row start. The young Italian was ahead of Troy Corser (Yamaha Motor Italia WSB), Lorenzo Lanzi (RG Ducati) and Max Biaggi (Sterilgarda Go Eleven Ducati) whose second row start still gives him a chance of fighting for the win.

Ninth quickest time was clocked by Karl Muggeridge (DF Racing Honda), while Japan's Yukio Kagayama (Suzuki Alstare) had to miss the Superpole session after crashing out in the afternoon's free practice session and being taken to hospital with concussion.

FIM Supersport World Championship

Broc Parkes (Yamaha World Supersport) clinched his third pole position of the season for the Supersport race at the Nurburgring with a lap time of 2 minutes 00.015 seconds .

The 26-year-old Australian, after clocking quickest time on the opening day, repeated the performance today to see off Britain's Craig Jones (Parkalgar Honda) by almost half-a-second. Australian riders also made up the rest of the front row, with Joshua Brookes (Hannspree Stiggy Motorsport Honda) and Andrew Pitt (Hannspree Ten Kate Honda) in third and fourth. On the second row can be found the surprise of the weekend, Mark Aitchison (Triumph Italia BE1) with Matthieu Lagrive (Intermoto Czech Honda) and German wild-card Arne Tode (G-Lab Racing Triumph), while Tommy Hill (Hannspree Honda Althea), who returned to racing this weekend after recovering from injuries suffered six months ago, set a superb eighth quickest time.

The top two riders in the standings Joan Lascorz (Glaner Motocard.com Honda) and Fabien Foret (Yamaha World Supersport) could only manage eleventh and tenth quickest times respectively, the Frenchman ruining his day with a crash.

© CAPSIS International