Fiat Yamaha Team rider Valentino Rossi will start the Spanish Grand Prix from fifth position tomorrow, despite being unable to complete his final qualifying lap in Jerez this afternoon. The Italian’s last flying lap was cut short by an electronic issue but he nevertheless has an excellent race pace and looks on course to be a protagonist in tomorrow’s 27-lap race.
Rossi spent the first half of this afternoon’s session refining set-up and testing Bridgestone tyres ahead of the race tomorrow, before strong laps with his first two qualifying tyres saw him on the provisional front row. He was confident of dipping under the 1’38 mark with his final try, but the electronic problem saw the end of his challenge and he will start from the middle of the second row. His time of 1’39.064 was dead-on the existing pole record, which was meanwhi le bettered by almost a second by his young team-mate Jorge Lorenzo, who took pole for the second consecutive race. Second place was filled by Dani Pedrosa and Tech 3 Yamaha rider Colin Edwards was on the front row once again in third. Tomorrow’s 27-lap race will start at 1400 local time.
Valentino Rossi
Position: 5th
Time: 1'39.064
Laps: 25
“Our target today was the front row and I think we could have done a 1’38 and maybe been second, but unfortunately I had an electronic problem on my last qualifying lap and I had to stop, which was unlucky. This is a pity and of course it would be better to be on the front, but anyway we’re not far away, the second row is not so bad and I think we can be competitive tomorrow. Our race pace is okay, I think with some small adjustments we can improve a bit more but we’re close. Congratulations to Lorenzo, I don’t know if we can be quite as fast as him on race tyres and he will be hard to beat tomorrow, but let’s see! We still haven’t decided on our final race tyre, we have to wait and see how the temperature is tomorrow, but it’s going to be a very exciting race and we’re all looking f orward to it!”
Davide Brivio - Team Manager “It was a pity that Valentino couldn’t finish his final qualifying lap today but unfortunately he had a small electronic issue, which we’re now looking into to work out exactly what happened so that we can avoid it in future. The good news is that, apart from this lap, we were fast with the qualifying tyre as well as on race tyres and so this bodes well for the rest of the season’s races. We still have to finalise our tyre choice for the race and make a few final adjustments, so we will be using the warm-up for this. Congratulations to Jorge and his team because he was very fast, I don’t know if we have quite the same pace as him but anyway I think that we can fight at the front.”
Qualifying Times:
FRONT ROW 1. Jorge Lorenzo (SPA) Fiat Yamaha Team 1'38.189
2. Dani Pedrosa (SPA) Repsol Honda 1'38.789
3. Colin Edwards (USA) Tech 3 Yamaha 1'38.954
SECOND ROW
4. Nicky Hayden (USA) Repsol Honda 1'39.061
5. Valentino Rossi (ITA) Fiat Yamaha Team 1'39.064
6. Randy De Puniet (FRA) LCR Honda MotoGP 1'39.122
THIRD ROW 7. Casey Stoner (AUS) Ducati Marlboro 1'39.286
8. James Toseland (GBR) Tech 3 Yamaha 1'39.334
9. John Hopkins (USA) Kawasaki Racing 1'39.439
FOURTH ROW 10. Loris Capirossi (ITA) Rizla Suzuki MotoGP 1'39.484
11. Shinya Nakano (JPN) San Carlo Honda Gresini 1'39.559
12. Chris Vermeulen (AUS) Rizla Suzuki 1'39.704
FIFTH ROW
13. Andrea Dovizioso (ITA) JiR Team Scot MotoGP 1'39.767
14. Alex De Angelis (RSM) San Carlo Honda Gresini 1'40.037
15. Anthony West (AUS) Kawasaki Racing 1'40.088
SIXTH ROW 16. Toni Elias (SPA) Alice Team 1'40.286
17. Sylvain Guintoli (FRA) Alice Team 1'40.939
18. Marco Melandri (ITA) Ducati Marlboro 1'41.027
Jerez Lap Record: V. Rossi (Yamaha) 2005, 1'40.596
Jerez Best Lap: L. Capirossi (Ducati) 2006, 1'39.064
