Casey Stoner and Nicky Hayden will start from second and third row respectively in the Czech Republic Grand Prix tomorrow after the today qualifying practice that saw the Australian finish just 0.003 seconds outside the front row and the American suffer a crash just as the session reached its climax, hurting his left wrist as a result.
Stoner has struggled to find the ideal set-up for his Desmosedici GP10 at this circuit but rode around his problems to challenge for pole position in an exciting finish to the session, which saw the top three riders separated by mere thousandths of a second before Dani Pedrosa emerged to secure pole by three tenths. Hayden had been impressive throughout the session in race trim but a crash in turn three when he was chasing a qualifying time on a soft tyre limits him to a third-row start and the painful prospect of 22 laps with a chipped radius (wrist) bone tomorrow.
CASEY STONER (Ducati Marlboro Team) 4th (1’56.868)
“This morning went a lot better than yesterday, we found quite a good solution and I was happy with the lap times considering the track was still a little damp after the storms last night. We hoped we could make progress in qualifying this afternoon but at the beginning every setting we tried seemed to go in the wrong direction. When we got the front working better we encountered a problem with the rear and vice-versa and we spent a lot of time coming in and out of the garage. It wasn’t until the last half hour that we found something better and on my second-last exit I tried to push harder but ran off the track a little bit and destroyed the lap time. I decided to come in and have another go on a fresh tyre and if it wasn’t for another rider in my way going into the last two corners I could have been on the front row. I’m disappointed in that respect but relatively happy with our pace in general. A few people are having problems with the front so it will be interesting to see what happens tomorrow, hopefully we can hang at the front.”
NICKY HAYDEN – (Ducati Marlboro Team) 8th (1’57.635)
“We started out well and on my first exit on a hard tyre I was able to improve my lap time quite a lot. We got into the 1’57s quite quickly and I thought we were in good shape to have a shot at a good grid position. Unfortunately my first flying lap on the softer tyre ended in turn three – I just lost the front quite early on entry, I don’t know why. I know people always see ‘I did nothing different!’ but honestly, even looking at the data, the brake pressure and speed was the same as my previous runs. We need to have a look at that and understand it tonight. Luckily it wasn’t too heavy and everything on my body is fine other than my left hand. It must have got caught under the bike because it’s very sore and even though we tried to go back out I couldn’t change direction. We’ve had it checked out by x-ray which showed we chunk off the tip of the radius, which isn’t good, but my scaphoid is okay and that’s the main thing because I have a screw in there and it’s not damaged. Just walking around the paddock it’s not too painful but we’ll have to wait and see how it goes over 22 laps on the bike tomorrow.”
Circuit Record: Jorge Lorenzo (Yamaha – 2009), 1’56.670 – 166.716 Km/h
Best Pole: Valentino Rossi (Yamaha – 2009), 1’56.145 – 167.469 Km/h
2010 Pole: Dani Pedrosa (Honda) 1’56. 508 – 166.9 km/h
