Championship leader Casey Stoner survived a minor spill to set a lap record and secure his ninth pole position of the season for Sunday’s Aragon Grand Prix.
The Australian Repsol Honda rider had to switch to his reserve bike after running off into the gravel at the track in north-eastern Spain, before clocking a time of one minute 48.451 seconds, 0.296 seconds quicker than team mate Dani Pedrosa.
American Yamaha rider Ben Spies was third fastest, 0.704 seconds behind Stoner, with champion Jorge Lorenzo, also of Yamaha, fourth with a deficit of 0.819.
“Everything has gone almost perfectly this weekend,” said Stoner.
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MotoGP: Aragon Grand Prix - Race Line Up
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“I’ve been really happy from the start. The bike’s been very close to what we want. We had to move a few things this afternoon because the temperature went up from this morning and yesterday, and it was our first chance to run in the hot conditions. We had to change to change the transfer and get everything a little bit more comfortable.” Yahoo! Eurosport UK
“But in general everything’s been working really well.”
“We’re good on old tires, new tires and the bike in general just seems to be flowing in this circuit. We had a little bit of a mishap my first qualifying tire or soft tire. We did the first lap and I was a little bit cautious in the first sector, just basically to get the tire warmed. But the next lap I went to push a little harder and I was going a lot quicker and I had a lot more grip than I had the laps before. So when I went to go on the brakes I felt I had too much lean angle, and so I picked the bike up, but I didn’t really find any more grip once I went off over the astroturf on the tarmac. It just kept locking the front and I couldn’t really get the brakes on. So I had to lay it down before it hit the barriers. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get bike one started. But we came back got bike two, still went faster and we’re pretty happy with this weekend.”
“The whole bike, package, everything is working well. Hopefully we can have a good result tomorrow.”
Dovizioso was a tenth back in fifth and a little more than that up on San Carlo Honda Gresini’s Marco Simoncelli in sixth, the final rider on row two. Cycle News
Nicky Hayden, who was on the podium here last year with Ducati, landed seventh on the grid, ahead of rookie Karel Abraham (Cardion AB Motoracing) and San Carlo Honda Gresini man Hiroshi Aoyama completing the third row.
Randy De Puniet, who had jumped to the third spot in the timings just before running off into the gravel, finished the session in tenth position, while Valentino Rossi crashed 15 minutes into the session, returning to the outing with 30 minutes to go and setting a best time of 1’49.960 to start 13th on the grid. motogp.com
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