Eleventh front-row start of the season for Rossi at Phillip Isand -ozzy go-

Valentino Rossi qualified second for the second consecutive race
at Phillip Island today, sealing his eleventh front-row start of the
season at a track that has seen him top the podium seven times
in his career. The Fiat Yamaha Team rider will share the front row
with Dani Pedrosa and Casey Stoner, promising an exciting battle
between the top three riders in the championship for tomorrow’s
Australian Grand Prix. Rossi’s team-mate Colin Edwards
meanwhile had a less successful qualifying session, setting the
eleventh fastest lap, which will put him in the middle of the fourth
row on tomorrow’s grid.

Following a day of changeable weather yesterday, this morning
saw Rossi and Edwards sixth and tenth respectively in similar
conditions, with the track starting out fully wet but drying quickly
throughout the session to produce some faster times in the latter
stages. Thankfully however the bad weather looked to have run
its course by the afternoon and the riders were rewarded their
first fully-dry hour on.

Rossi was lapping comfortably in the top third of the field through
most of the session, as he made the most of the time available to
refine his race set-up and tyre choice. With ten minutes to go his
first lap on a qualifying tyre put him just ahead of Casey Stoner,
the Australian having put in an early qualifying lap to provisionally
head the board. Rossi however was soon knocked off the top by
Stoner on his second tyre and then pushed down to third when
Dani Pedrosa put in the eventual pole time of 1’29.201. With four
minutes to go Rossi came close to edging the Spaniard off but
eventually had to settle for second with a lap of 1’29.419.
Edwards moved into the top six at one point during the session
but was unable to find the right setting with which to properly
exploit his Michelin qualifying tyre and his best lap was 1.475 off
Pedrosa’s, leaving him with an uphill battle for tomorrow’s
Australian Grand Prix.

Valentino Rossi: “Today has been a good day and this afternoon
especially we were able to have a very positive practice. This
afternoon was the first full hour we’ve had in the dry and we were
able to do some very good work on the setting. Now we have a
clear idea about what we need to...” full story on Yamaha Racing