Scene set for Troy vs. Troy.

Australia's two World Superbike champions look set to battle it out for home glory at Phillip Island tomorrow, after Troy Bayliss edged out Troy Corser for pole position down under.

2001 champ Bayliss - who has returned to the Corona Extra WSBK championship after three years in MotoGP - smashed Phillip Island's seven-year-old lap record to take his second successive pole of the year for Ducati Xerox.

In scintillating form throughout the weekend, the 36-year-old was quickest in every practice and qualifying session and clinched pole with a time of 1m32.159s, a full second faster than Corser's 1999 mark.

"It's very nice to be on pole back here at Phillip Island, at the moment I'm having a bit of a dream run," declared Troy. "Everything's gone well today, my lap was good enough to take pole, but honestly I thought I was going to do a little bit better. It was messy and I had my feet in the wrong place in a few spots, but I'm happy.

"I'm not kidding myself however because I realise how hard tomorrow is going to be, with two long races and plenty of heat out there. I really need to get a good start if I want to try and do something special, but Phillip Island makes for great racing and it tends to bring the top few guys together and you end up having a race and then it gets sorted out at about two-thirds distance," he added.

Bayliss will head three world champions in the top three grid positions when he lines up alongside Corser's Alstare Suzuki and the Ten Kate Honda of James Toseland, while Steve Martin completed the front row for Foggy Petronas team.

Just 0.214secs separated Bayliss and Corser, but there was a 0.6secs gap from Corser to Toseland - and a further 0.2secs to Martin - suggesting the two Troys might be able to break away tomorrow. However, Qatar race two winner Corser is expecting "quite a few guys" to be fighting for victory and "a fantastic day's racing".

"We struggled a bit yesterday with grip and the clutch, so we made some adjustments to the set-up and changed the clutch today," explained Corser. "It was definitely an improvement - though not perfect yet. I think we're all going to have some sort of grip problems tomorrow if the weather stays as hot as it has been these two days.

"Most of us are all on the same tyres, so it's going to be a very long, hard day tomorrow. I would've liked to win Superpole - in front of all the Aussie fans - but being on the front row is what counts. There are quite a few guys in with a chance, so it's going to be a fantastic day's racing for all the fans."