Under the floodlights of the spectacular Losail International Circuit on Friday evening it was triple World Champion Jonathan Rea who qualified on pole with a stunning 1’56.228 lap, putting him nearly half a second ahead of his closest challenger, Alex Lowes. In third place on the grid is Tom Sykes.

Recording a time a tenth of a second under the lap record Rea grabbed pole at the end of an exciting final Tissot Superpole 2 session of the season and he was delighted with his performance.

Also on the front row for Race 1 at the Acerbis Qatar Round are Lowes and Sykes, who qualified 0.447s and 0.835s off P1 respectively.

Xavi Fores will start from the middle of row two, sandwiched between fourth placed Lorenzo Savadori and sixth placed Eugene Laverty.

Michael van der Mark, Chaz Davies and Marco Melandri will all start from the third row, with Davies on a mission to beat Sykes to second place in the 2017 general standings at this final round of the season. Melandri ended the session with a technical problem which prevented him from moving any higher up the grid.

2014 World Champion Sylvain Guintoli qualified in 10th place on the Kawasaki ZX-10RR, riding for the Kawasaki Puccetti Racing team, with Jordi Torres and Leon Camier also slotting in on row four.

Earlier Guintoli grabbed the top spot in SP1 in the final seconds of the session to shoot through to SP2, with the provisional leader in that session Camier also making it through in second place.