Donington Park MotoGP: Alvaro Bautista secured fourth 250 pole of the season

Alvaro Bautista’s fastest lap of 1.31.834 in the first qualifying session yesterday was enough to put him on pole position for tomorrow’s 27-lap 250cc race.

With conditions less than favourable today, Bautista ended up down in 11th in the this afternoon’s second qualifying session, but says he’ll be happy come rain or dry tomorrow.

He said: “Today it wasn’t possible to go faster than yesterday.

“It has been a good day for us and we got to test something for the wet and now have a good setting.

“I enjoyed it very much today and tomorrow we have good settings for dry and wet so we can fight for a podium.”

Marco Simoncelli, the winner of the last two rounds, was second faster yesterday and overall, and he said very much the same as the man who trails him by 42 points in the championship battle.

“Yesterday I rode fast and was very happy for myself,” said Simoncelli.

“Today with the track wet it is very difficult but I’m happy also for wet as I have good settings and feel fast so I hope to make a good race tomorrow.”

Simoncelli sits second in the championship at the moment, three points shy of Mika Kallio who qualified 14th in the dry yesterday, but was fastest in the wet this afternoon.

As with most session today there were a few casualties of the slippery conditions including Lukas Pesek and Karel Abraham both spilling off their Aprilia machines.

But the most spectacular, and most entertaining, spill came from Alex Debon who crashed heavily on the decent down Craner Curves.

His bike continued on pilotless, just missing one of the Campetella Racing Aprilia’s before the lone Lotus Aprilia displayed an impressive performance of speedway-style dirt-tracking completely on it’s own.

Eugene Laverty will start tomorrow’s race from 20th, and was 22nd quickest in wet qualifying today.

Donington Park MotoGP 250cc second qualifying results

1. M. KALLIO Red Bull KTM 250 1’45.482
2. H. AOYAMA Red Bull KTM 250 + 0.255
3. A. BALDOLINI Matteoni Racing + 0.375
4. Y. TAKAHASHI JiR Team Scot 250 + 0.917
5. M. SIMONCELLI Metis Gilera + 0.961
6. I. TOTH Team Toth Aprilia + 1.107
7. J. SIMON Repsol KTM 250cc + 1.142
8. A. DEBON Lotus Aprilia + 1.715
9. T. LUTHI Emmi – Caffe Latte + 2.107
10. M. PASINI Polaris World + 2.114
11. A. BAUTISTA Mapfre Aspar Team + 2.242
12. A. ESPARGARO Lotus Aprilia + 2.342
13. H. BARBERA Team Toth Aprilia + 2.368
14. L. PESEK Auto Kelly – CP + 2.554
15.  F. LAI Campetella Racing + 2.642
16. H. FAUBEL Mapfre Aspar Team + 2.899

22. E. LAVERTY Bluesens Aprilia +5.882