Valencia GP - Qualifying
SUPERB STONER MISSES POLE BY LESS THAN A TENTH, CAPIROSSI
HAPPY WITH HIS RACE PACE
 Ducati
Marlboro Team rider Casey Stoner will start tomorrow's season-ending
Valencia GP from the front row of the grid after missing out
on pole position by a tantalising 0.086 seconds. It is his
12th front-row start from the year's 18 races. Team-mate Loris
Capirossi will start from the third row.
The pair will be watched tomorrow by the entire staff of
Ducati Corse - more than 100 people - who fly into Valencia
tomorrow morning aboard a specially chartered plane. The trip
is a thank you for their sterling work which has won the riders',
constructors' and teams' MotoGP World Championships.
Champion Stoner, who missed pole at the Malaysian GP two
weeks ago by a similarly narrow margin, was the fastest rider
here using race tyres in the three pre-qualifying practice
sessions. And this afternoon's performance was enough to win
the awesome Australian the season-long BMW M qualifying award,
for which he receives a BMW M3 Coupe.
Stoner has already won ten races this year and has also been
relentlessly impressive in practice and qualifying, topping
a remarkable 29 of the 43 practice, qualifying and warm-up
sessions since the German and US GPs, where he led all five
pre-race sessions at both events.
Capirossi was happy with his day's work, though he was slowed
by another rider in his crucial second run on qualifying tyres.
CASEY STONER, 2nd fastest, 1m 31.603s
"I'm pretty happy again, we're on the front row and
we've been concentrating on the race setting. I've probably
got the record for the most second places in qualifying this
year; again we missed out on pole by a few thousandths, it's
been like that every time we've nearly been on pole this year.
The race set-up is looking pretty good and we're quite happy
with race distance on the tyres; like this morning we started
out with eight laps already on the tyres and finished the
session with the same set. But we are still trying to get
slightly better lap times towards the end, just to make sure
we are competitive at the end of the race. We just need to
improve the traction a little bit, because the turning and
everything else seems fine. And we've still got to decide
what rear tyre to run, depending on what the weather does.
It's nice to win the car - Adriana has already scored it!"
LORIS CAPIROSSI, 8th fastest, 1m 32.261s
"I'm pretty happy because we've set up the bike quite
well. We changed the weight distribution slightly to put more
weight on the rear for more traction and I could feel the
improvement. We have still to decide between two different
compound race tyres. Maybe we will try the harder tyre in
warm-up to see if it will work well in the race. Anyway, I'm
happy, I was lapping consistently around the 1m 33.5s mark
and that's not bad. With my qualifying tyres I made a mistake
during my first run and I came across a slower rider on the
second run. That kind of thing happens, so no problem. The
important thing is that we've found a good set-up and I think
we can have a good race."
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