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Stoner Takes Pole at Philip Island

Only a day after his 24th birthday, Casey Stoner managed to claim pole position for the Iveco Australian Grand Prix held on the Phillip Island circuit.

  The qualifying session proved to be very exiting, with Stoner leading from the start, but being more and more pressured by the Italian Yamaha rider, Valentino Rossi.

In the end, the Australian Ducati works rider secured his first spot on the starting grid by just a 0.050s margin. The battle for third spot was very entertaining as well, Honda’s Dani Pedrosa recording a lap time by just 0.001s faster than Jorge Lorenzo.

We don’t have the same grip levels that we have had the last two years here. With the stiffer chassis which we have now it works very well at some circuits but not so well at others. So we have lost that advantage,” explained Casey Stoner after qualifying.

  The Australian rider also talked about some of the preparations he and his team made on the Ducati bike. “We definitely have more corner speed but we are spinning a lot as we come out of corners and we can’t get it to hook up so we’re working a lot on the rear end. We’ve shortened the bike, we’ve changed some of the pivot positions, we’ve dropped the riding height, all sorts of things, but we are still searching for something for tomorrow. The warm-up session is going to be very important.”

Stoner showed a mature and experienced approach to Sunday’s race, explaining he is thrilled with the result, but will try to remain focused on the race and celebrate afterwards.

”It would be nice to win but if you get too hopeful of things they normally don’t happen. So we’re just going to see what we can do, try to play it as smart as we can in the race and come home and finish it. Then if we win obviously that is fantastic,” added Stoner.

Fourth placed Jorge Lorenzo was followed by another fellow Yamaha rider, Colin Edwards, who managed to fence off Gresini Honda’s Alex de Angelis. De Angelis had an early crash at the MG corner, but managed to get up and in the end finish ahead of Nicky Hayden.

Randy de Puniet finished eighth, ahead of Pramac Ducati’s Mika Kalio. Tenth spot went to Andrea Dovizioso on the second Honda works bike and 11th to Gresini Honda’s Toni Elias.

Disappointing qualifiers for Suzuki, as both its riders placed at the back of the pack, with Loris Capirossi 13th and Chris Vermeulen 15th. In between the two Suzuki riders managed to squeeze in Marco Melandri, while Britain’s James Toseland finished 12th. With Canepa sitting this one out, the starting grid will be closed by Scot Racing’s Gabor Talmacsi.
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