The women's team pursuit squad has slashed almost two seconds off the national record in Australia's opening ride of the 2015 track cycling world championships in Paris.

Annette Edmondson, Ashlee Ankudinoff, Amy Cure and Melissa Hoskins scorched around France's new national velodrome in 4 minutes 18.135 seconds to set the fastest qualifying time on Wednesday night (Thursday morning AEDT).

The quartet broke the previous national record of 4:20.999, which they set just three weeks ago at the Australian championships in Melbourne.

Australia - which won bronze in 2014 - is now daring to dream it could beat four-time reigning world champions Great Britain and take gold in Thursday night's final.

"Yeah, anything's possible, but we're taking it one round at a time and hopefully we end up on top," Tasmanian Amy Cure said.

"We've been putting in the hard yards to get on that top step of the podium and we're going in the right direction."

The British women - undefeated at a major championships over the past four years - set the second-best qualifying time of 4:18.207 on Wednesday night.

Canada was third a further two seconds back.

Cure said the Australian riders worked hard ahead of the worlds and backed each other in qualifying "and that showed in our time".

The 22-year-old is the reigning points race world champion but will not defend her title in Paris due to a schedule clash with the team pursuit.

But if she can clinch the gold with Edmondson, Ankudinoff and Hoskins it will ease the pain.

"That would make up for it for sure, well and truly," Cure said.

"It's a bit sad I'm not going to get to race the points race, but this is my main focus and winning rainbows in the team pursuit would be well above the points race for sure."

Melissa Hoskins says the Australian quartet started believing they could beat the imperious British team after finishing a close second at the London world cup meet in late 2014.

"In London we got a really good sniff, we had the confidence and the belief came back again," the West Australian said.

"Long term, it is about (the 2016 Olympics in) Rio and we've closed that gap that everyone's been trying to close and hopefully we might be able to finish it off. But tomorrow is a totally different day."

Slashing 1.8 seconds off the national record was a "big jump", Hoskins said, "but it's a quick track and we knew if we could ride a quick time in Australia we could ride a quick time here (in Paris)".

Australia - which will face New Zealand in the first round on Thursday with the winner going through to the gold-medal final - last won the women's team pursuit title in 2010.

AAP