MOTOGP: LORENZO IS STILL TOP DOG WITH HIS FOURTH POLE OF SEASON
2010-07-17 23:27:22 Author: admin Source:
Jorge Lorenzo continued his dominance to capture pole at Round 9 of the Motorcycle Grand Prix Championship's German Grand Prix. In an extreme hot condition at the Sachsenring, the Spaniard looped the track fastest for his fourth pole of the season with a time of 1'21.817. Mid-way through qualifying however he suffered an engine problem on the start/finish straight and was forced to pull over. The session was then red-flagged when two riders (Randy de Puniet and Ben Spies) crashed after hitting the oil that had leaked from his bike. On the restart, Lorenzo put in a string of fast laps, eventually taking pole with four minutes to go before improving again to hold off challenges from Ducati's Casey Stoner and Repsol Honda's Dani Pedrosa who finished second and third respectively.
Lorenzo's pole position became a sort of second nature in the Yamaha camp and the entire MotoGP paddock due to Valentino Rossi's early return. Rossi has garnered all the attention whenever he got on and off the bike during yesterday's practice sessions and today's qualfying runs. Having scored a decent seventh best overall in practice, Rossi turned up his pace in qualifying to achieve fifth only 5 tenths of a second off his team mate's pole time, despite still walking around the pits with aids. Rossi's physical condition is positive so far, with not too much pain from either his shoulder or his leg and he is hopeful of being able to complete the race distance tomorrow.
Rossi commented, ""I am really happy after this second day because I feel confident on the bike. I have suffered more today because we've had two sessions instead of one and I have some pain and I'm more tired than yesterday, but I feel good and my movement is okay. Also the shoulder feels fine so it's definitely a positive return for me."
"Unfortunately today at the end we tried a small modification to improve the setting but it made it worse, so I think we lost one position for this. I don't think the front row was possible because Lorenzo, Stoner and Pedrosa went under 1'22 and I don't think I could have done that today." he added.
Stoner battled hard to overcome the intense heat and tight layout of the circuit, setting the second fastest time. After visiting three fast and flowing circuits in the last three rounds, the Australian worked hard to adapt the set-up of the GP10 to the slower circuit and made a significant progress on the final stint of qualifying.
Pedrosa's team mate Andrea Dovizioso will share the second row with Rossi and MotoGP rookie Aspar's Héctor Barberá who achieved his best premier class qualification to date with sixth.
Despite his crash, de Puniet has managed to secure seventh fastest to lead the third row of the German GP grid ahead of another rookie Marco Simoncelli and Aleix Espargaro who qualified eighth and ninth respectively.
Results
1 Jorge LORENZO Yamaha 1'21.817
2 Casey STONER Ducati +0.024 / 0.024
3 Dani PEDROSA Repsol Honda +0.131
4 Andrea DOVIZIOSO Repsol Honda +0.446
5 Valentino ROSSI Yamaha +0.578
6 Hector BARBERA Aspar +0.637 /
7 Randy DE PUNIET Honda +0.793
8 Marco SIMONCELLI Honda +0.807
9 Aleix ESPARGARO Pramac +1.093
10 Marco MELANDRI Honda +1.100
