Bautista powers to Aragon pole, Rea 10th

Full WorldSBK Superpole qualifying results

Alvaro Bautista has bolted to his second World Superbike pole position seeing off Sandro Cortese and Tom Sykes as Jonathan Rea could only manage 10th place at Aragon.

The Aruba.it Racing Ducati rider produced a new lap record of 1m 49.049s to charge to pole position, seeing off a late challenge from Sykes on the BMW who went wide at the final turn putting him 0.508s off the Spaniard.

Sandro Cortese notched up a surprise with his own late lap to leap up to second place for GRT Yamaha, 0.365s behind Bautista, but bigger shocks hit the factory Kawasaki squad.

After low-key opening laps during the qualifying session, both Jonathan Rea and Leon Haslam failed to hook up fast laps on the Pirelli qualifying – suspected due to yellow flags triggered by a late crash by Ryuichi Kiyonari – to see the reigning world champion down in 10th place with team-mate Haslam in 12th.

Alex Lowes kept up his impressive pace to head up the second row for Pata Yamaha, keeping clear of eye-catching laps from customer Ducati duo Michael Ruben Rinaldi and Eugene Laverty, who pushed Markus Reiterberger on to the front of row three for BMW.          

Chaz Davies (Aruba.it Racing Ducati) and Jordi Torres (Pedercini Kawasaki) round out the third row ahead of Rea, with Michael van der Mark (Pata Yamaha) splitting the Kawasakis on row four.

Marco Melandri suffered a late crash in qualifying to relegate him to 13th place for GRT Yamaha ahead of leading Moriwaki-Althea Honda rider Leon Camier.

Toprak Razgatlioglu was another to struggle in qualifying with the Puccetti Kawasaki rider down in 16th place with the crashing Kiyonari in 17th place and Alessandro Delbianco 18th place.