Home pole and 'best possible job' for Stoner
Home pole and 'best possible job' for Stoner
If Casey Stoner can win Sunday's Australian MotoGP, it will mark his fourth home victory in a row and mean he has been unbeaten at Phillip Island throughout his Ducati career.
Stoner, moving to Honda next season, took the first step towards that achievement by securing pole on Saturday, which was his 25th birthday.
The double 2010 race winner lapped a threatening 0.668sec quicker than Yamaha's new world champion Jorge Lorenzo, and 1.2sec ahead of third fastest Ben Spies, after a session that effectively ended two minutes early due to the arrival of rain.
“I always seem to celebrate my birthday here at Phillip Island but I guess there are worse places to be!" said Stoner.
"We have had virtually every single condition you could imagine thrown at us this weekend so we'll have to wait and see what happens tomorrow before we make any decisions on set-up, but so far I think we have done the best possible job in every condition.
"I'm quite happy with the setting in the wet even though we haven't had a fully wet session, which made it difficult to get a good reading from the bike.
"We have had two good sessions today, making progress in the last half an hour of this morning and another big step again in the last half hour of the afternoon.
"With the last two soft tyres I was able to make a substantial improvement to the lap time and we're in the best possible position for tomorrow so I'm pretty happy so far.â€
Team-mate Nicky Hayden missed the final four minutes following a small crash in turn four. However, the rain reduced the potential damage to his grid position and he will line-up in sixth place.
“My first run with a qualifying set-up on the soft tyre felt decent and I got a good lap time but I was quite confident I could improve," said Hayden.
Stoner, moving to Honda next season, took the first step towards that achievement by securing pole on Saturday, which was his 25th birthday.
The double 2010 race winner lapped a threatening 0.668sec quicker than Yamaha's new world champion Jorge Lorenzo, and 1.2sec ahead of third fastest Ben Spies, after a session that effectively ended two minutes early due to the arrival of rain.
“I always seem to celebrate my birthday here at Phillip Island but I guess there are worse places to be!" said Stoner.
"We have had virtually every single condition you could imagine thrown at us this weekend so we'll have to wait and see what happens tomorrow before we make any decisions on set-up, but so far I think we have done the best possible job in every condition.
"I'm quite happy with the setting in the wet even though we haven't had a fully wet session, which made it difficult to get a good reading from the bike.
"We have had two good sessions today, making progress in the last half an hour of this morning and another big step again in the last half hour of the afternoon.
"With the last two soft tyres I was able to make a substantial improvement to the lap time and we're in the best possible position for tomorrow so I'm pretty happy so far.â€
Team-mate Nicky Hayden missed the final four minutes following a small crash in turn four. However, the rain reduced the potential damage to his grid position and he will line-up in sixth place.
“My first run with a qualifying set-up on the soft tyre felt decent and I got a good lap time but I was quite confident I could improve," said Hayden.
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