The Australian was all alone on top of the classification on Thursday night, being the only rider in the pack to drop under one minute and 56 seconds (1:55.752). The Australian set the pace early in P1 and never looked back, eventually finishing the day some 0.610 seconds ahead of his Honda teammate Dani Pedrosa.
Surprisingly enough though, third place did not belong to any of the off-season testing front-runners – from Yamaha or Honda – but to Aspar Ducati's Hector Barbera. The Spaniard stopped the clock at 1:56.421 with only a few seconds to go, preventing a Honda 1-2-3 finish, as he pushed Gresini's Marco Simoncelli to 4th place.
From 2nd to 8th place on the P1 timing reports, lap times differed only by 0.240 seconds, so time gaps inside the Top 10 were minimal. Under the circumstances, Valentino Rossi was more than content with his 5th place, as he clocked the Losail circuit only a tenth of a second slower than Pedrosa.
Yamaha duo Ben Spies and Jorge Lorenzo did not enjoy the best 45 minutes of their 2011 campaign on Thursday night and finished in 6th and 7th respectively, while followed by Honda's Andre Dovizioso, Pramac Ducati's Randy de Puniet and Tech 3 Yamaha's Colin Edwards.
This year's Qatar GP spans over 4 days, in order to give all classes of the FIM Road Racing World Championship the chance to practice and qualify under similar night conditions. Action on the Losail track will resume on Friday night.
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