Rossi on Pole at Sepang

Valentino Rossi at Sepang

“Il dottore” managed to take pole position in Malaysia after a performance that saw him beat the track’s previous record. With a time of 2:00.518s Valentino Rossi beat his own record of the track dating back since 2006 and set on a 990 cc bike, by 0.087s.

Second on the grid went to Rossi’s teammate, Jorge Lorenzo, who struggled a great deal of the qualifying on the sixth spot. The Spaniard still seemed to be bothered by his knuckle injury sustained last GP in Australia.

Dani Pedrosa took third for tomorrow's starting grid, after a consistent qualifying session, in which he spent most of his time on the same position. Casey Stoner looked very strong at the beginning of the session, but near the end he couldn’t find his winning form, which. coupled with some personal mistakes sent the Australian fourth for Sunday’s race.

Fifth place belonged to Loris Capirossi, after a very consistent qualifying session for the Italian as well. This was a great result for Suzuki following their disappointing performance from Phillip Island last week.

Toni Elias secured 6th place, while Nicky Hayden came in 7th. Randy de Puniet finished 8th, with Colin Edwards 9th and Alex de Angelis 10th.

Andrea Dovizioso ended a very poor qualifying session at Sepang, the Italian rider coming in just 11th on the second Honda factory bike. The Pramac Ducati team secured the following two spots on the grid with Mika Kallio and Aleix Espargaro finishing 1.917s and 2.341s respectively off of first place.

Chris Vermeulen of Suzuki came in 14th, while Marco Melandri couldn’t achieve more than 15th place on his Hayate Kawasaki. The riders closing tomorrow’s starting grid are James Toseland and Gabor Talmacsi, both recording lap times over 3 seconds slower than Valentino Rossi.