MOTOPROGP

Casey Stoner will start the 2009 MotoGP World Championship from pole position in Qatar after a dominant performance in today's single qualifying session, which saw Nicky Hayden suffer a spectacular crash that has left him battered, bruised and doubtful for his Ducati race debut tomorrow night.

Nicky hayden is suffering severe pain in his back and after undergoing some initial x-rays at the circuit medical centre, he has been taken to a local hospital for further checks. He also required three stitches in a cut on his chest and a decision on his participation in the race will be made tomorrow.

As he had done in each of the free practice sessions, Stoner set the pace throughout this evening's 45-minute grid shoot-out and rarely looked threatened at the top of the time sheets, leading nearest rival Valentino Rossi by over a second for the majority of the session before the Italian closed the gap to 0.432 seconds at the end.

However, the Australian's first question to his mechanics on his return was not about his own authoritarian performance but about the condition of Hayden, who he had seen left strewn in the gravel at turn eight following a sickening high-side. It was the latest episode in a luckless weekend for the American, who suffered an engine breakdown in today's final free practice.

"It rained a little bit at ‘lunchtime' between the two practice sessions today but it was gone as quickly as it arrived and we were relieved that we were able to ride at all. There is a little bit of dust and dirt that seems to come down with the rain here so we knew the track conditions would be slick and the lap times wouldn't come down much.

The reality was that there was so much dirt out there that the softer compound tyres worked virtually like a qualifier and only lasted for a couple of laps”, he said. “Even on a race tyre it is hard to predict whether your set-up is going to work because the conditions are different every time we go out so we're going to have to wait and see what tomorrow brings. It's impossible to guess what could happen in the race but generally I'm happy with our set-up and the main thing for us at this early stage is to pick up points, keep working on our weaknesses and make sure we don't make the same mistakes as last year by getting to the middle of the season with problems to fix. The whole team are keeping our fingers crossed for Nicky too. Hopefully he can ride tomorrow but the most important thing is that he's okay."

Randy De Puniet

LCR Honda MotoGP rider Randy De Puniet had a positive night at Losail race track ending the
Moto GP's floodlit qualifying session in 7th place.

The Frenchman, riding the Honda RC212V, and his squad managed to get the 9th position in the second 45-minute free session at 7 pm local time. De Puniet circulated the “desert” circuit 36 times during the two sessions clocking his quickest time of 1'56.358.

“I am happy because we made a good job during the three sessions and improved a lot my feeling on qualifiers. We made some adjustments on the setting and now the bike turns better and I feel more aggressive in the corner entry”, he explained. “I was expecting this since a long time so I feel quite satisfied. The winter was hard as we missed some track time so we are very pleased with this third row. I am getting used to Bridgestone tires and feel more comfortable now. I aim to finish the race in the top six”.

Despite some poor rain in the evening the track surface reached 25°C with all the riders making their tires choices for tomorrows 22-lap night event that gets underway at 23:00 local time. Today's frontrunner Stoner topped the board with a 1'55.286 lap followed by Rossi and Lorenzo.

Mika Kallio

First MotoGP qualifying session satisfying for Pramac Racing rider Mika Kallio who will therefore start from the fourth row.

The Finnish rider made it to sensibly improve his best lap time compare to the free practices by more than one second and a half. Less luck for his teammate, Niccolò Canepa, that concluded in eighteenth position. The Genovese rider still needs to ride for some kilometers to result more competitive.

Tomorrow the start of the MotoGP 2009 season with the Grand Prix of Qatar that will begin at 10pm local time in Italy.

Fabiano Sterlacchini – Pramac Racing Technical Director

“Satisfied even if in this world everyone wants always more. With only few tenth of a second we could have been one row in front. Anyway everything is going well and conquered the top ten in the first qualifying session, as MotoGP Rider, is not so bad. Tomorrow it will be interesting to see how we will do in the race, we will have to start well to remain with the fastest riders. Niccolò, as said yesterday, still have to ride for many kilometers to understand the bike at 360 degrees. We believe that after a few races he can be faster as well.”

Mika Kallio – Pramac Racing rider – 10th best lap time in 1'56"852

“Not too bad. Yesterday was a bit better with seventh position, but if I would have known before coming here that I would have been in the top ten in my first qualifying session I would have put my signature for it. Of course it is only the beginning and we have to work too improve.

At the moment there aren't any big problems. When I was riding with other riders I noticed that I didn't have the same grip coming out of the corners. We will have to improve this and things will be easier for us.”

Niccolò Canepa – Pramac Racing rider – 18th best lap time in 1'58"999

“I knew things wouldn't have been easy. I am a bit disappointed but the only thing to do in this moment is work hard to improve. We are too far, I know we can do much better and we will give all we have. Tomorrow it will be for me a great opportunity to ride for many kilometers to improve my riding style on this track.”

Dovizioso and Pedrosa

Qualifying for the Grand Prix of Qatar saw the Repsol Honda riders secure 4th and 14th places on the grid for tomorrow's 22-lap race, with both Andrea Dovizioso and Dani Pedrosa putting in fighting performances at opposite ends of the timesheets.

Like yesterday, Dovizioso was immediately quick, initially setting the pace in qualifying and spending much of the 45-minute session within the top three. The Italian was delighted with his final lap time of 1m 55.977s and found a set-up for his RC212V which he believes will allow him to fight hard in the season opener tomorrow night.

“I'm very happy with this fourth position. We worked hard during qualifying, testing the two bikes with two different set-ups. Both solutions gave good feedback, I was confident, and the machine performance improved”, he said. “I'm happy with the rhythm we found for the race with the hard tyres, and also the lap times we achieved with the soft tyre. I'm satisfied also because I had room for even more improvement during my last lap with soft tyre - in fact I made a mistake and I spoiled the improvement I'd made in T1. I think racing suits my style and mentality better than practice so I'm looking forward to tomorrow.”

Pedrosa too put in an impressive performance today, dropping his lap time by nearly four seconds from yesterday, an improvement the 24-year-old Spaniard said he wasn't fully expecting. Though he's still far from full fitness as he recovers from injury, Pedrosa has given himself a fighting chance of taking some points when the MotoGP season kicks off at 23.00 tomorrow evening.

“Well we've made it into the race and that was the aim of coming to Qatar so I'm please with that. I didn't expect to improve my lap time by this much from yesterday so this is good progress. The leg feels a little better and I pushed harder today than yesterday, though this situation is not something that is fixed after one day”, he explained. “My lap time is not really so bad considering my condition and the time I've spent away from the track, but for sure I wanted to be faster than this and a bit further forward on the grid. Still, the race is here we'll get ready to give it the maximum effort tomorrow. Maybe I can improve my lap times by a further second or so.”

Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo

Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo will share the front row for tomorrow's season-opening Grand Prix in Qatar, having qualified second and third in tonight's session at the Losail International Circuit.

The pair were split by just 0.024 seconds tonight and beaten only by Casey Stoner, with Rossi and Stoner having now been first and second in all three sessions.

Despite the single-tyre rule having spelled the end of one-lap qualifying tyres, tonight's session proved to be exciting nonetheless with most riders, including Rossi and Lorenzo, choosing to keep one of the softer compound Bridgestone tyres to use at the end of the 45 minutes for a couple of flying laps.

Tomorrow's 22-lap race will see the riders using the harder compound Bridgestone rubber and Rossi, who has had a good race pace all weekend, is confident of being able to mount a strong challenge.

“I am really happy to be on the front row here because we know that this isn't one of our best tracks. We also knew that Stoner would be strong and, although this is definitely true, we're not too far off and the gap is closing all the time”, he said. “Starting second is going to be very important here because there is a question mark over the tyres on this surface. The asphalt is still very dirty which is hard on the tyres and I think that the last few laps are going to be quite entertaining! There are a couple of places on the track where we can still be faster so we will have a look at the data and I hope we can make another step in the warm up and fix a couple of small problems. There is definitely a question mark over the last six or seven laps though and I think we could be sliding about a bit. Anyway, everyone is in the same position, with the same tyres, and it could make it quite fun; let's wait and see.

Lorenzo meanwhile has posted his fast times on the softer tyre and now needs to make a few changes together with his team and use the warm-up well in order to refine his setting and find a better feeling with the race tyre.

“After being on pole here in my first MotoGP race last year, I am happy to be back on the front row at least!”, he said. “It is going to be important I think because it will be a hard race. During the test here I was faster with the hard tyre but for some reason we have the opposite situation this time and I am much faster with the soft tyre. With the hard tyre we have a few issues still, which is a problem because this is the tyre we need to use for the race. Now we need to work hard to try to solve the problem tonight. Tomorrow I won't be thinking about winning, just about doing the best I can and taking as many points as is possible in the circumstances. Of course you never know what will happen in a race!”

Capirossi and Chris Vermeulen

Rizla Suzuki MotoGP racer Loris Capirossi began his 20th season in Grand Prix racing by recording the sixth fastest time at Losail in Qatar yesterday evening.

Capirossi (1'58.468, 17 laps) used a new setting in his Suzuki GSV-R today, which was completely different to the set-up he used at the recent test in Qatar. He found a few useful things in the new configuration and with that - along with the previous data - will try to obtain the best set-up for tomorrow's qualifying and race day.

"For the first practice it was not too bad, but we did struggle a bit with the setting. In the recent test it was not perfect so we tried a new one and this didn't work as well so we will use some stuff from that and go back to the old one”, he explained. “We have a good idea what we need to modify tomorrow and I am sure we will be stronger. 45 minutes seems a really short time and it is difficult to get a lot of work done, also with the limited amount of tyres - especially on such a dirty track - made it quite tough. Overall we are quite pleased and we will have quite an easy way to improve tomorrow!"

Chris Vermeulen (P14, 1'59.348, 17 laps) and Capirossi both used the softer option compound front tyres for the duration of the session in order to save their allocation of the harder tyre for the remainder of the weekend. Vermeulen was pleased with how the session went considering he didn't use his favoured compound.

"It was not really the start to the weekend that we wanted”, said the Australian. “We have a limit on tyres and didn't really want to use any of the hard front tyres that we will be using for racing. We tried to make the softer one work and we were going not too bad in the beginning of session, but at the end I kept the front tyre in and there was a lot of movement in the front of the bike and struggled to keep corner speed up.

It was a bit frustrating that we couldn't go as fast as we have been round here, but I still have all my hard front tyres left and hopefully the speed will come back when we put that in."

Friday saw the new rules for MotoGP come into force, with only one session on the first day and that has been reduced to 45 minutes, from the hour that was available last year. It was also the first time that that the single control tyre came into operation, with all riders now using Bridgestone rubber and restricted to only eight front tyres (four of each compound) and 12 rears (six of each) for the whole weekend.

The evening track and air temperatures were both in the mid 20ºCs and a strong wind made conditions quite difficult as the fine desert sand blew onto the circuit. Casey Stoner on his factory Ducati set the quickest time.

Rizla Suzuki has one more practice session - also of 45 minutes - early Saturday evening, followed by a qualifying session of the same duration later on. Sunday's opening race of the 2009 season will get underway at 23.00hrs local time (20.00hrs GMT).

Colin Edwards and James toseland

Colin Edwards made a dazzling start to the new MotoGP world championship season in Qatar tonight, the Monster Yamaha Tech 3 rider finishing the opening practice session of 2009 in third position.

The American's best time of 1.57.835 on his last lap was only bettered by Casey Stoner and Valentino Rossi as the MotoGP field got accustomed to a new practice format. With track time reduced from one hour to 45 minutes under new cost-cutting rules implemented for 2009, Edwards quickly worked on fine-tuning the front-end set-up of his Yamaha YZY-M1.

Despite windy conditions, track temperatures were 10 degrees hotter than at last month's night test session, and Edwards quickly took advantage to move into second place with 19 minutes remaining. He only slipped down to third with a late attack by reigning world champion Rossi. Edwards though was only 0.396s off the Italian.

“I'm pretty happy to have started close to the front because it is always important to try and hit the ground running”, he said. “We played around with the front-end mainly because I had a few issues at the last test in Jerez with movement on the front tyre whenever I tried to really push hard. It was a bit like a speed limit in Jerez but the changes we have made feel really good. It's not a massive change, I'm only talking a millimetre here and there but it has taken away some of that movement and that is crucial for me because I'm such a front-end guy. I'm happy it was the right direction too because you really can't afford to waste any time with less track time now. You've got to back yourself and your team that the changes you make are going to be an improvement, and tonight it worked out. I've still got some small issues but I needed to make this change because it is obvious the way I force the handlebars with my arms is different to Valentino and Jorge. I'm happy to have got a good start for the Monster Yamaha Tech 3 team and give Herve something to smile about on his birthday!"

James Toseland was content with 11th place on the timesheets as the British rider set a best time of 1.58.850. That impressive display left him just 0.079s outside of the top ten.

It was a morale-boosting performance from the 28-year-old who occupied a place in the top six until the closing stages to show two big pre-season crashes haven't dented his confidence going into his second MotoGP season.

“I'm pleased with tonight because it has been a tough winter but I was in the ballpark right from the start. I'm eleventh but on the lap times I'm really close to the top six and that is really encouraging. The team did a great job with the base setting because I've not had much time on the bike, and their understanding of what I need has been fantastic. I felt comfortable on the bike and that was important for me”, he explained. “My right foot is a little bit sore after the crash in Jerez but it is not proving a big problem on the bike at all. I'm delighted with my recovery because for a while I couldn't even put any weight on my right foot. But if we had a race tomorrow then I'd be going for a top six position and that's where I want to be coming off the winter. I used the softer tyres tonight because with the track temperature ten degrees hotter than at the test, I wanted to save the harder tyres because that is what I'll need for the race. With the shorter session and less tyres, it really comes down to strategy and my team were brilliant. Hopefully now I'll be able to give Hervé a belated birthday present on Sunday.”

The start of the new season was a special occasion for the Monster Yamaha Tech 3 squad with the number 52 taking on extra significance. As well as being Toseland's race number, team manager Herve Poncharal celebrated his 52nd birthday today.

27 DUCATI Casey STONER AUS 337.2 1 1'55.286 15 17 Ducati Marlboro Team
46 YAMAHA Valentino ROSSI ITA 334.2 2 1'55.759 18 19 0.4730.473 Fiat Yamaha Team
99 YAMAHA Jorge LORENZO SPA 337.0 3 1'55.783 18 19 0.4970.024 Fiat Yamaha Team
4 HONDA Andrea DOVIZIOSO ITA 333.6 4 1'55.977 18 19 0.6910.194 Repsol Honda Team
65 SUZUKI Loris CAPIROSSI ITA 332.5 5 1'56.149 17 18 0.8630.172 Rizla Suzuki MotoGP
5 YAMAHA Colin EDWARDS USA 330.9 6 1'56.194 17 19 0.9080.045 Monster Yamaha Tech 3
14 HONDA Randy DE PUNIET FRA 327.9 7 1'56.358 13 17 1.0720.164 LCR Honda MotoGP
7 SUZUKI Chris VERMEULEN AUS 325.8 8 1'56.493 19 19 1.2070.135 Rizla Suzuki MotoGP
15 HONDA Alex DE ANGELIS RSM 332.1 9 1'56.790 17 19 1.5040.297 San Carlo Honda Gresini
36 DUCATI Mika KALLIO FIN 338.0 10 1'56.852 17 19 1.5660.062 Pramac Racing
33 KAWASAKI Marco MELANDRI ITA 331.0 11 1'56.962 18 19 1.6760.110 Hayate Racing Team
24 HONDA Toni ELIAS SPA 333.8 12 1'57.225 17 18 1.9390.263 San Carlo Honda Gresini
52 YAMAHA James TOSELAND GBR 328.6 13 1'57.510 16 18 2.2240.285 Monster Yamaha Tech 3
3 HONDA Dani PEDROSA SPA 338.6 14 1'57.729 20 20 2.4430.219 Repsol Honda Team
59 DUCATI Sete GIBERNAU SPA 330.9 15 1'57.899 14 15 2.6130.170 Grupo Francisco Hernando
69 DUCATI Nicky HAYDEN USA 332.6 16 1'58.215 12 16 2.9290.316 Ducati Marlboro Team
72 HONDA Yuki TAKAHASHI JPN 328.0 17 1'58.784 12 17 3.4980.569 Scot Racing Team MotoGP
88 DUCATI Niccolo CANEPA ITA 328.518 1'58.999 13 16 3.7130.215 Pramac Racing

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Saturday, April 11, 2009

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