2006 Australian Superbike Championship (YMF Loan) - Round Four - Queensland Raceway

Dorna Day 2 Report

Under glorious sunshine and ideal temperatures for riding, and at a Sachsenring circuit packed to the rafters with loyal fans, the MotoGP riders took part in an exciting qualifying sessions to decide who would lead the grid tomorrow in the betandwin.com Motorrad Grand Prix Deutschland.

Dani Pedrosa will start the German race from pole position, the fourth pole of his debut season in MotoGP. Repsol Honda’s Spanish sensation has already won from the top spot twice this season, at China and Donington, and this weekend has the chance to close the 26-point gap to team-mate Nicky Hayden, who accompanies Pedrosa on the front row. They are separated by second-placed rider Kenny Roberts Jr, who has been in fantastic form thus far on his 2006 visit to the Sachsenring Circuit. Team Roberts’ sole rider joined Pedrosa as the only man to break the 1’22 barrier.

Always strong in qualifying, Shinya Nakano heads the second row, although it looked for a while during the hour that he would claim his first MotoGP pole. He will start ahead of three riders still carrying injuries from last month; Loris Capirossi, Marco Melandri and Sete Gibernau complete the top seven positions, followed by Casey Stoner, John Hopkins and Makoto Tamada.

Valentino Rossi, who needs a win to keep up the pressure on Hayden at the top of the leaderboard heading into the American’s home race, could only manage to qualify eleventh at Sachsenring and will look to produce another of the classic performances which have seen him win races from such positions in the past.

Jorge Lorenzo took his third pole in a row today at the Sachsenring Circuit, for a race which gives him the opportunity to retake the lead of the 250cc World Championship. Trailing Andrea Dovizioso by just a single point, Lorenzo headed a top ten for tomorrow’s betandwin.com Motorrad Grand Prix Deutschland that were all within a second of his 1’25.073 lap.

Yuki Takahashi and Roberto Locatelli will start from second and third respectively, ahead of Alex de Angelis, Hiroshi Aoyama and Anthony West. Current championship leader Andrea Dovizioso could only manage seventh, with Marco Simoncelli and Shuhei Aoyama completing the top ten.

Lukas Pesek earned his second 125cc pole of the season with a time of 1’27.064 in the final qualifying session at Sachsenring. The Derbi racing rider will start at the head of the pack ahead of runaway championship leader Alvaro Bautista, who suffered a crash moments from the end of the session. Mattia Pasini dropped to third after having taken provisional pole yesterday, whilst Mika Kallio completed the front row.

Row 2 will be led by impressive young Derbi rider Nico Terol, ahead of Fabrizio Lai, Gabor Talmacsi and Pablo Nieto. Simone Corsi and Hector Faubel round off the top ten.

Angel Rodriguez and KTM stand-in Randy Krummenacher both suffered spectacular crashes during the qualifying session.

1st, Dani Pedrosa (Honda), 1'21.815 :
"It's very difficult to say if I can win the race. Anyway, today in the afternoon was good, we did a good lap time. This morning I did a mistake and destroyed one bike. Fortunately I'm ok, but this afternoon we had to run in a new bike because I destroyed the other, but it went well and I got on the front row which is important for this track. Let's see if we can do a great start, the set-up is good so I hope to do a great race."