Stoner tears up Phillip Island taking pole at his home Grand Prix
The young Australian, who celebrates his birthday tomorrow on race day set a fantastic lap time of 1'29.975, with substantial gap of 0.473 to second place Lorenzo. Tomorrow he will be looking to fight for his fifth consecutive win on this circuit, in front of his home fans.
Tomorrow, Casey Stoner could potentially clinch his second World Championship. If he is able to score 10 points or more than title contender Jorge Lorenzo, he will seal the Championship with two races remaining. Honda will also be hoping to see at least one of their machines take a top three spot, this would be enough for them to be awarded the Constructor's Championship, their 60th in Grand Prix racing.
CASEY STONER – 1st 1'29.975
"So far so good, we have a good race pace and the bike's feeling pretty good at the moment. We still need to improve the rear grip, but I think this is the same for everyone, we'd also like to get the harder rear tire working better for the race. We began Qualifying with older tires to understand where we are for the race and I'm quite happy as the lap times we were achieving were similar to Jorge and Dani who were on the new soft tire. Then we put on the soft tire for the first time since yesterday morning, everything felt good and we were able to improve our lap time consistently, but it's still difficult on the left side of the tire and we're getting a lot of spinning and tire degradation. We'll see what the weather does tomorrow, it's not looking too good right now but we'll adapt to whatever it throws at us. Jorge is strong everywhere we go and I think my chances of taking the Championship here tomorrow is pretty slim to be honest, we're just going to go out there and concentrate on winning the race".
Results
Pos | Rider | Time | Nat | Bike | Team |
1 | Casey Stoner | 1'29.975 | AUS | HONDA | Repsol Honda Team |
2 | Jorge Lorenzo | 1'30.448 | SPA | YAMAHA | Yamaha Factory Racing Team |
3 | Marco Simoncelli | 1'30.599 | ITA | HONDA | San Carlo Honda Gresini |
4 | Alvaro Bautista | 1'30.714 | SPA | SUZUKI | Rizla Suzuki MotoGP |
5 | Andrea Dovizioso | 1'30.780 | ITA | HONDA | Repsol Honda Team |
6 | Nicky Hayden | 1'30.792 | USA | DUCATI | Ducati Marlboro Team |
7 | Ben Spies | 1'30.835 | USA | YAMAHA | Yamaha Factory Racing Team |
8 | Dani Pedrosa | 1'30.871 | SPA | HONDA | Repsol Honda Team |
9 | Colin Edwards | 1'31.237 | USA | YAMAHA | Monster Yamaha Tech 3 |
10 | Loris Capirossi | 1'31.583 | ITA | DUCATI | Pramac Racing |
11 | Randy De Puniet | 1'31.635 | FRA | DUCATI | Pramac Racing |
12 | Hiroshi Aoyama | 1'31.889 | JPN | HONDA | San Carlo Honda Gresini |
13 | Valentino Rossi | 1'31.980 | ITA | DUCATI | Ducati Marlboro Team |
14 | Cal Crutchlow | 1'32.023 | GBR | YAMAHA | Monster Yamaha Tech 3 |
15 | Karel Abraham | 1'32.054 | CZE | DUCATI | Cardion AB Motoracing |
16 | Toni Elias | 1'32.503 | SPA | HONDA | LCR Honda MotoGP |
17 | Damian Cudlin | 1'36.666 (out of 107%) | AUS | DUCATI | Paginas Amarillas Aspar |