No Surprises in the Qatar Qualifying

stoner-ducati-motogp-qualifying-qatar

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that’s been visiting A&R for the past few days when you read that Casey Stoner has won the pole position for the Qatar GP tomorrow. The Australian has been dominating the week and holds nearly half a second over second place rider, Valentino Rossi, who with Stoner, Lorenzo, and Dovizioso are the only riders to break into the 1:55’s this week.

Outside of the front row, Capirossi and Edwards have both improved their times greatly of the course of the qualifying and practice sessions, and will finish out the second row of the grid. Randy de Puniet will lead the third row, which we only mention so we can refer to it later when he crashes, takes off his shirt, and possibly high-fives a Playboy bunny. The MotoGP season starts tomorrow, repent sinners.

Results of the MotoGP Qualifying Practice for the Qatar Grand Prix:

Pos	No.	Rider	Bike	Time	Diff	Diff Previous
1	27	Casey STONER	DUCATI	1’55.286
2	46	Valentino ROSSI	YAMAHA	1’55.759	0.473	0.473
3	99	Jorge LORENZO	YAMAHA	1’55.783	0.497	0.024
4	4	Andrea DOVIZIOSO	HONDA	1’55.977	0.691	0.194
5	65	Loris CAPIROSSI	SUZUKI	1’56.149	0.863	0.172
6	5	Colin EDWARDS	YAMAHA	1’56.194	0.908	0.045
7	14	Randy DE PUNIET	HONDA	1’56.358	1.072	0.164
8	7	Chris VERMEULEN	SUZUKI	1’56.493	1.207	0.135
9	15	Alex DE ANGELIS	HONDA	1’56.790	1.504	0.297
10	36	Mika KALLIO	DUCATI	1’56.852	1.566	0.062
11	33	Marco MELANDRI	KAWASAKI	1’56.962	1.676	0.110
12	24	Toni ELIAS	HONDA	1’57.225	1.939	0.263
13	52	James TOSELAND	YAMAHA	1’57.510	2.224	0.285
14	3	Dani PEDROSA	HONDA	1’57.729	2.443	0.219
15	59	Sete GIBERNAU	DUCATI	1’57.899	2.613	0.170
16	69	Nicky HAYDEN	DUCATI	1’58.215	2.929	0.316
17	72	Yuki TAKAHASHI	HONDA	1’58.784	3.498	0.569
18	88	Niccolo CANEPA	DUCATI	1’58.999	3.713	0.215