Pedrosa On Pole With Hayden On Front Row Too -ozzy go- world.honda.com

An hour of hyper-intense MotoGP qualifying got underway in
stifling heat here at this huge Honda facility; ambient temperature
at an unseasonal 32-degrees with the track at 45-degrees.

Within five minutes of the start of this hour-long session Rossi
was in the dirt at turn one after Randy de Puniet (Kawasaki) had
put in an early fastest lap of 1m 48.109s to take an early
provisional pole from Dani Pedrosa who topped yesterday’s
timesheets.

De Puniet and then Casey Stoner (Ducati), who was struggling
here, both visited the same turn one gravel trap as Rossi early in
the session. All those riders exploring the limits of grip at a corner
which is among the trickier first turns on the calendar – and just
as significant in terms of race position in those critical early laps.

Dani Pedrosa swiftly showed his mastery of this 4.801km track.
The Spanish ace, now really on top of his RC212V after being
mildly out of sorts mid-season, reeled off a 1m 47.633s lap with
42 minutes still left on the clock, to retake pole from de Puniet.


Marco Melandri (Gresini Honda RC212V) was on the pace early on, holding third place
from Loris Capirossi (Ducati). Toni Elias (Gresini Honda RC212V) too was looking good,
breaking into the top six with 38 minutes gone.

Then de Puniet made his now customary move of fitting a sticky qualifying tyre at around
the mid-point of the session. The Frenchman promptly made pole again with a time of
1m 46.643s and this was to prove a more than respectable time until two minutes
remained.

His team-mate Anthony West made the same move with twenty minutes to go and for a
time the green duo topped the leaderboard. But they were both vulnerable when push
came to shove and Dani bested them with a 1m 46.543s lap to take charge again.

The late order was Pedrosa, de Puniet, Rossi, Nicky Hayden, West and Colin Edwards
(Yamaha) until with two minutes remaining Rossi looked to have gone top with a 1m
46.864s time. But Dani had more left to give and on the one minute mark he scorched
round in 1m 45.864 seconds, destroying Capirossi’s 2006 pole time by nearly a second -
with 190cc less to play with.

Rossi persisted for one more lap with a qualifying tyre, but could only do a 1m 46.255s
time to stay second despite Hayden’s best efforts to oust him. Elias meanwhile made it to
fifth for a row two start alongside fourth fastest de Puniet.

Poleman Dani Pedrosa said: “I’m very happy to be in this position and it’s been a little
while since I’ve been on the front row. We’ve spent today mostly working on race tyre
selection and it looks like we’ve got good pace in all the conditions we’ve had so far this
weekend. We’ll have to look at the weather for tomorrow to make our final selection of
race tyre, but I think we’re looking pretty good, and hopefully the endurance will be
there too because we’ve tested for that by putting in a lot of laps on the same tyre. I
hope we get through the first corner cleanly and have a good race at Honda’s home
track.” click on ozzy go to te full story on world.honda.com