World Superbike champion Troy Bayliss set a ferocious pace in qualifying for Sunday's two races at Silverstone.

The Australian scorched round the international track in a time of one minute 25.295 seconds.

His Ducati team-mate Lorenzo Lanzi was second, but the Italian was seven tenths of a second adrift.

Britain's James Toseland was third, almost a full second off the pace on his Honda, while Spaniard Ruben Xaus was fourth quickest for Ducati.

Yamaha's Troy Corser, who was quickest of all early in the session, wound up fifth, followed by team-mate Noriyuki Haga, another who sat at the top for a while.

Behind Haga came Michel Fabrizio, Kawasaki's Regis Laconi, Honda's Karl Muggeridge and Max Neukirchner to round out the top 10.

Neukrichner's Suzuki outpaced the factory bikes of Yukio Kagayama and Max Biaggi ended up 11th and 12th, respectively.

Bayliss was pleased with his speed in the circumstances. "I'm very happy, everything went well and I feel pretty comfortable on the bike," he said.

"Silverstone in general has got a lot less grip than where we've come from in the Misano tests so that bike didn't work here.

"We made a few changes today and the bike's working well.

"What we want now is better weather so we can do a couple of long runs and put it to the test. I thought we should be doing 25s, I did okay when the track was wet but we sat and waited until the track was dry near the end and the last 10 minutes it was completely dry.

"It'll be difficult to find much more than what I did but all in all I'm happy," he added.

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