Rossi on Le Mans pole

Valentino Rossi has put himself on pole position for Sunday’s Le Mans GP after setting his best laps in the closing seconds of the session.

Rossi’s team mate Colin Edwards was holding a solid pole in the dry session but couldn’t match Rossi’s pace on the last lap and had to settle for second place on the grid, 0.223 seconds down.

The final place on the front row goes to Honda rider Marco Melandri who put in consistantly good lap times throughout the session in contrast to his team mate Sete Gibernau who waited until the end of the session to set the time that gave him fourth place.

Factory Honda rider Nicky Hayden held pole for quite a while but in the end had to settle for fifth ahead of the Kawasaki of Shinya Nakano and the Suzuki of John Hopkins.

Max Biaggi took eighth place ahead of the Ducatis of Carlos Checa and Loris Capirossi.

Brit Shane Byrne managed to get over the electircal problems that had plagued the Roberts KTM machine throughout the weekend and finised in 17th place using a brand new engine that had never been on the track.