CARL Fogarty was beaten into pole by Troy Corser for tomorrow's second round of the World Superbike championship at Phillip Island in Australia.

During today's Superpole final qualifying session light rain forced organisers to switch to a 50-minute session and not the one-lap Superpole competition.

A tactical session ended with Corser taking the 18th pole position of his career to set a new record, beating Blackburn ace Fogarty and Doug Polen's 17.

Fogarty secured second place as Castrol Honda's Aaron Slight and Colin Edwards ended the session in third and fourth places respectively.

Slight commented: "The final qualifying was a bit of a lottery in those conditions but it's tomorrow that counts. After a bit of a troubled day for me on Friday I'm a lot happier today and really looking forward to the two races here at Phillip Island."

Edwards continued his early season improvement on the 750cc Honda to take fourth place to complete the front row of the grid.

"I feel comfortable around this place," claimed Edwards. "I know it's going to be difficult to beat the Ducatis here but that's what I'm here for."

Doriano Romboni put in a late burst to move into fifth place at the very end of the session. Kawasaki pairing Gregorio Lavilla and Akira Yanagawa will start from sixth and seventh places respectively.

Local Ducati rider Steve Martin is the first of the wild card riders in eighth place with last year's Phillip Island race winner Noriyuki Haga ninth and Suzuki's Katsuaki Fujiwara completes the top 10.

Final qualifying times: 1 Troy Corser, Australia (Ducati) 1m 32.193s, 2 Carl Fogarty, GB (Ducati) 1m 32.612s, 3 Aaron Slight, New Zealand (Castrol Honda) 1m 32.995s, 4 Colin Edwards, USA (Castrol Honda) 1m 33.149s, 5Doriano Romboni, Italy (Ducati) 1m 33.430s, 6 Gregorio Lavilla, Spain (Kawasaki) 1m 33.437s, 7 Akira Yanagawa, Japan (Kawasaki) 1m 33.512s, 8 Steve Martin, Australia (Ducati) 1m 33.534s, 9 Noriyuki Haga, Japan (Yamaha) 1m 33.716s, 10 Katsuaki Fujiwara, Japan (Suzuki) 1m 34.018s.

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