Barros, consistently fast from his first four-stroke practice laps of the Spanish circuit to the end of qualifying, once more made full use of his 990cc V5 Honda's exceptional performance parameters, setting consistent times under the existing qualifying and race lap records. Despite his frequent fast laps he had to rely on his first day performance for his single best qualifying lap but nonetheless his 1:33.584 was fully 2.5 seconds inside the previous race lap record of 1:36.085, set in 2000 by Honda World Champion Alex Criville, who was a trackside observer today.

In some respects Barros was forced to settle for second after experiencing a reversal of fortune in the morning session, as he himself described.

"I had some problems with my engine and the strategy we had planned for the first session we had to use in the second session instead, when we worked on choosing the right tyre compound for the race," said the Motegi GP winner. "At the end of the session I went out with some soft tyres on the bike to try and get the pole start for tomorrow, but I finished second. I am quite satisfied because I am close and I am lapping consistently quickly."

Daijiro Kato (Fortuna Honda Gresini RC211V) was another rider who despite securing a safe front row start could not improve on his Friday time, which was still the third fastest of the weekend.

"As far as the machine is concerned we made some improvements in the set-up and it was better than yesterday," said the 2001 250cc Champion. "I also did some long runs to help choose a tyre for the race. For the race I do not have too many worries and I will be trying to get my best result of the season."

World Champion Valentino Rossi (Repsol Honda Team RC211V) took a second row start after being deposed from his previous front row status in a flurry of late session activity. Sixth overall, Rossi's late charge narrowly missed out on a front row start in the final seconds of the session. This race will be Rossi's fourth race in succession where he has taken a second row start.

Valencia is the only circuit in current use that Rossi has yet to win a GP at and indeed Rossi, something of a modern MotoGP phenomenon, has found Valencia to be something of a jinxed circuit, having never finished higher up the finishing order than eighth, in the 1999 250GP.

Rossi, who is the youngest rider ever to score a total of 50 GP wins in all classes, will be going all out on raceday to equal Mick Doohan's record of 12 premier class GP wins in a season, and six points or more would give Rossi the record points score in a single GP year.

"The feeling on the bike is not so bad, I now feel comfortable doing mid-1m34s," said the four-time champion. "The problem right now is that some of the others are faster! I think that for the race we can run a fast and consistent pace and we have good consistent tyre wear. The trouble for me is now the track, which is not my favourite. It always seems that the more I try the slower I go!"

One place behind Rossi came his team-mate Tohru Ukawa (Repsol Honda Team RC211V) aiming to secure second place after the scheduled 30-lap race on Sunday.

"The good news is that I have moved from a very disappointing 12th place to seventh on the grid so it was the right direction but it has not been a good weekend so far," said Welkom GP winner Ukawa. "The crash yesterday knocked my confidence and we really struggled the rest of the day finding a good set-up. Today we started off making small changes and then made bigger changes, which seemed to work. I'll be checking out the data with the team later to see if the machine telemetry can speed up our progress."

Loris Capirossi (West Honda Pons NSR500) had a tough final qualifying session, running off the track and finishing 12th at a circuit he hoped to shine on.

"After seeing where I ended up on the grid I have not too much to say," quoted a subdued Capirossi. "It is obvious here that there is not too much chance for the two-strokes, and I am looking forward to getting over this Grand Prix as the last few races have been very difficult. Physically I am feeling better, although not 100%, but this is no excuse for being so far back."

A top 15 placing for Jurgen van den Goorbergh (Kanemoto Racing Honda NSR500) was in marked contrast to his front row start at the previous Phillip Island race, with the Dutch star dropping from 12th to 15th place.

"We lost about 15 minutes of the session with a front brake problem," explained van den Goorbergh. "We have cleared up about 50% of the front-end chatter problem we had yesterday. I know the tyre combination we ran today will go race distance no problem. We have a couple of things to do overnight, nothing drastic."

Tetsuya Harada (Pramac Honda NSR500) had a subdued final race on his two-stroke machine, finishing the last of 22 qualifiers after announcing his retirement from racing.