Rossi claims provisional pole in Jerez

Valentino Rossi has claimed another provisional pole today in Jerez, Spain ahead of Sunday’s MotoGP race.

But Daijiro Katoh proved that the new four-strokes won’t have it their own way as he led a two-stroke charge. Katoh was the meat in an RCV sandwich with Rossi’s teammate Tohru Ukawa in third.

But it was the performance of the two-strokes which was the talking point for many trackside – six out of the top ten qualifiers were riding the older 500cc machines.

1)V Rossi 1: 42.736 2) D Katoh 1:43.075 3) T Ukawa 1:43.519 4) A Barros 1:43.843 5) L Caprirossi 1:44.216 6) K Roberts 1:44.295 7) O Jacque 1:44.391 8) S Gibernau 1:44.486 9) S Nakano 1:44.503 10) N Abe 1:44.507 11) M Biaggi 12) C Checa 13) J McWilliams 14) G McCoy 15) N Aoki 16) T Harada 17) J van de Goorbergh 18) R Laconi 19) J Hopkins 20) P Riba

125cc Qualifying:

1)M Poggiali 2) P Nieto 3) D Pedrosa 4) G Borsoi 5) L Cecchinello 6) A de Angelis 7) A Vincent 8) A Rodriguez 9) S Bianco 10) N Ueda 11) S Jenkner 12) M Azuma 13) Y Ui 14) M Giansanti 15) J olive 16) M Sabbatani…29) C Davies

250cc Qualifying:

1)M Melandri 2) E Alzamora 3) R de Puniet 4) F Battaini 5) R Locatelli 6) F Nieto 7) C Stoner 8) S Porto 9) R Rolfo 10) T Elias 11) A Debon 12) D Checa 13) S Yuzy 14) H Aoki 15) R Jara…19) J Vincent 21) L Haslam