CRUCIAL FOURTH PLACE FOR STONER IN QUALIFYING IN QATAR,
MELANDRI ON THE FIFTH ROW
 Casey
Stoner starts his defence of the MotoGP World Championship
from fourth on the grid in the Grand Prix of Qatar following
today's qualifying session, having been quickest in each of
the three free practices. The third of those was when the
Australian did his best work, the adjustments made since yesterday
with the race setting on the GP8 having the desired effect
and giving him confidence for tomorrow's race.
His team-mate Marco Melandri was nowhere near as satisfied
after only managing the 16th fastest time on qualifying tyres.
The Italian is hoping for a much better showing in the race.
CASEY STONER (Ducati Marlboro Team) 4th; 1'54.733
"To be honest I expected to be on the second row so
I'm not too disappointed with the result, although I reckon
that if I had another qualifying tyre like the one I set my
fast lap on I could have comfortably been on the front. Anyway,
sometimes there are certain things you can't plan for and
the important thing is that we're in a good position for the
race. We made one big change to the bike for third free practice
and it was really positive but in tonight's qualifying session
we tried a few things that didn't have the effect we'd hoped
for, so we'll go back to what we know works and I think that
with a few more small changes we can be really competitive.
There a lot of people with good race times, especially Lorenzo,
so it will be interesting to see where everybody is in the
warm-up. I know Jorge well from my 125 and 250 days so I'm
not surprised that he and Andrea (Dovizioso) are fast but
I must admit I didn't expect James Toseland to be so strong
and I take my hat off to him. If it comes down to a battle
between us it won't be anything different to any other race
- everybody on the grid is a strong rival and they all have
to be beaten."
MARCO MELANDRI - (Ducati Marlboro Team) 16th; 1'56.730
"Unfortunately there's not much to say about today because
things haven't gone well. We've tried a lot of things but
nothing has had the result we hoped for. I'm not able to ride
well and we just can't seem to find the grip on the front
or the rear so I'm just too slow. We want to try out so many
things but there's no more time so we'll just have to see
how we go in the race"
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