Ducati’s Casey Stoner has claimed the top spot in this afternoon’s United States GP qualifying session to extend his recent run of pole positions. Stoner has now taken five consecutive pole positions, the sixth in a row for a rider on Bridgestone tyres, in a competitive qualifying hour which saw the top thirteen riders break the existing pole record, set by Stoner in last year’s US GP. Stoner’s best lap, 1m20.700s, represents a 1.5s improvement over his previous pole record.
Fiat Yamaha rider Valentino Rossi took the runner-up spot, his sixth front row start of the season, four-tenths-of-a-second adrift of Stoner, but three-tenths clear of third-placed man Nicky Hayden. Rossi’s result makes it only the second occasion this season that Bridgestone-shod riders occupy the front two positions on the starting grid after Donington Park in Britain three races ago. Rizla Suzuki’s Chris Vermeulen will start tomorrow’s 32-lap Laguna Seca race from eighth position, setting his best time on Bridgestone race tyres, while Alice Team rider Toni Elias was the only other Bridgestone rider to claim a top ten result today.
The mid-field was closely-fought with half-a-second separating Jorge Lorenzo in fourth from Ben Spies in 13th with many Bridgestone riders only marginally missing out on higher grid positions. Bridgestone has continued looking at its race tyre options for Sunday’s GP with some encouraging performances by a number of riders in today’s practice.
Tyre Talk with Tohru Ubukata - Bridgestone Motorsport – Manager, Motorcycle Race Tyre Development Are you pleased with the results of qualifying today? “In general, I am quite satisfied with the qualifying tyre performance today with Casey’s pole position and Valentino’s second place giving us only our second 1-2 of the year in qualifying. Many of our riders were able to mark a reasonable improvement on their race tyre lap time when using the qualifiers, which is certainly encouraging. The midfield was very close and I think some of our riders were unfortunate not to get higher grid positions today. We still have to work more on the qualifying tyres to allow all our teams to extract the maximum performance, especially when everyone is so tightly-packed.”
How is race tyre performance? “The performance of our race tyres continues to show promise for tomorrow afternoon, and over mid-range runs, the lap times seem quite consistent. I believe our riders have a good idea on what tyres to use in the race if the weather and track conditions are similar to what we have faced today.”
Bridgestone-shod Riders’ Qualifying Session Results Pos. - Rider - Team - Qualifying Time - (pos) - Gap to Pole P1. Casey Stoner - Ducati Corse 1m20.700s Pole
P2. Valentino Rossi - Fiat Yamaha Team 1m21.147s +0.447s
P8. Chris Vermeulen - Rizla Suzuki MotoGP 1m21.971s +1.271s
P10. Toni Elias - Alice Team 1m21.999s +1.299s
P11. Loris Capirossi - Rizla Suzuki MotoGP 1m22.039s +1.339s
P12. Shinya Nakano - San Carlo Honda Gresini 1m22.092s +1.392s
P13. Ben Spies - Rizla Suzuki MotoGP 1m22.127s +1.427s
P14. Sylvain Guintoli - Alice Team 1m22.719s +2.019s
P15.Marco Melandri - Ducati Corse 1m22.957s +2.257s
P16. Alex de Angelis - San Carlo Honda Gresini 1m23.035s +2.335s
P17. Jamie Hacking - Kawasaki Racing Team 1m23.309s +2.609s
P18. Anthony West - Kawasaki Racing Team 1m24.525s +3.825s
Weather: Dry – Air 19°C, Track 40°C (Bridgestone measurement)
