After dominating all three practice sessions at Losail, Australia’s Casey Stoner (Repsol Honda) clinched the first pole of the 2011 season, the 27th of his career, for the Commercialbank Grand Prix of Qatar with a fine display in qualifying on Saturday evening.
The MotoGP class was presented with warmer temperatures and less wind compared to the two previous days during the hour-long qualifying session.
Stoner set a 1:54.137 and although the lap wasn’t the fastest qualifying mark ever, it was the fastest of the control tyre era and not far from the outright mark set in the last year of qualifying tyres.
“We can’t ask for a much better weekend, everything has gone well and the team have made all the right steps and gradually improved the bike as the weekend progressed,” Stoner commented.
“Tonight I was able to achieve good, consistent lap times again on the hard tyre and this is important for the race tomorrow.
“As ever, we will keep our feet on the ground as we’ve had good starts to seasons in the past and then they haven’t played out as expected, we just need to keep working and ensure that we continue to progress.
“We’ve done all our homework and the best job possible, now I just want to get the season started.”
Dani Pedrosa (Repsol Honda) was the only man who could compete with Stoner’s brilliance and took provisional pole off him during the session, but ended up 0.205s behind when Stoner blitzed his lap time with a pole position lap of 1:54.137.
Pedrosa will now make his first ever front row start at the Losail International Circuit.
“The weekend has been very good for us so far, I’ve been running at the top in every session and I’m very happy to be on the front row in Losail for the first time – this is a big improvement for me,” Pedrosa said.
“Nevertheless, we have to focus on the race, Casey is running very fast, also [Jorge] Lorenzo is improving very quickly, so we have to focus making no mistakes tomorrow. I don’t know yet if the race will be a fight between Casey and myself.
“I want to prepare as best as possible for tomorrow and be ready to be consistent for 22 laps. The race will be fast, I guess, so we will need to maintain a high pace. I hope I will be able to do it and fight for the victory.”
The final place on the front row went to Jorge Lorenzo (Yamaha Factory Racing) who finished 0.810s behind Stoner.
“There were some really impressive lap times out there tonight in the session,” Lorenzo said. “We are still quite far behind the front but our goal is to finish on the podium and that is in my mind for tomorrow.
“My race pace is pretty good – I think I can keep running 1:55.7s or maybe 1:55.8s. We will finalise our set up in warm up and try to achieve that tomorrow.”
Marco Simoncelli (San Carlo Honda Gresini Team) was the surprise of the session with a great lap to finish fourth fastest, just four-hundredths slower than the current MotoGP World Champion.
Ben Spies on the second factory Yamaha was fifth, with the top Ducati again Héctor Barberá (Mapfre Aspar Team) who was sixth fastest, 1.086s off the time set by Stoner.
Monster Yamaha Tech 3 again produced a good showing with the sole British representative Cal Crutchlow (Monster Yamaha Tech) managing eighth place on the grid for his first MotoGP race, despite the awkward injury to his finger.
“It feels great to have qualified eighth when you look at the calibre and record of some of the guys behind me, but I’m not going to be getting ahead of myself,” the rookie said. “It is just a shame it is not the four-rider per row formation because that would be a second row!”
Repsol Honda’s Andrea Dovizioso heads up the second row after timing in seventh fastest, whilst Valentino Rossi will start from the third row on his Ducati debut after setting the ninth fastest lap, precisely 1.5s off Stoner’s time.
“I think that without my shoulder problem, which is causing us to lose five or six tenths, we could have been on the second row today, because we were able to improve the setup by making changes that will also be important in the foreseeable future,” Rossi commented.
“Today I was able to ride the GP11 better, but by the time we used the soft tyre at the end of the session, my strength was gone. When I tried to do my lap time, there were some parts of the track where I just couldn’t push.”
Monster Yamaha Tech 3’s Colin Edwards completed the top 10 in QP, which Álvaro Bautista missed after undergoing surgery on a fractured left femur he suffered in a practice session crash on Friday.
2011 MotoGP World Championship
Round One – Losail Circuit, Qatar
MotoGP Qualifying: