Capirossi quickest in Catalunya qualifying

Loris Capirossi gave some heart to die-hard two-stroke fans today when he set the fastest time in first qualifying in Catalunya ahead of Sunday’s MotoGP race.

The West Honda rider went 1.2 seconds under Valentino Rossi’s lap record from 2001 on his way to provisional pole, despite being more than six mph down on the top speeds of the fourstrokes of Rossi and Tohru Ukawa.

Suzuki’s Sete Gibernau went second fastest, just 8/100ths behind Capirossi’s time of 1:45.451. Gibernau benefited from shadowing the Italian as he set his quickest lap, and from the team’s new, full-spec 2002 Michelin tyres, available to Suzuki for the first time since its switch from Dunlops.

Third fastest was Ukawa who posted the highest top speed of the day – 197.9mph down the long start/finish.

Conversely the Proton of Jeremy McWilliams was the second slowest bike out there – (marginally quicker than teammate Nobuatsu Aoki) over 15mph slower than Ukawa’s machine. But McWilliams still managed to qualify 14th – ahead of Akira Ryo on the Suzuki RCV and Olivier Jacque on the Tech 3 Yamaha.

1)L Capisrossi 2)S Gibernau 3)T Ukawa 4)C Checa 5)V Rossi 6)K Roberts 7)M Biaggi 8)J Hopkins 9)R Laconi 10)A Barros 11)D Kato 12)N Abe 13) S Nakano 14) J McWilliams 15)N Aoki 16)J van de Goorbergh 17)O Jacque 18)P Riba 19)A Ryo 20)T Harada 21)A Hoffman

125s:

Manuel Poggiali claimed polewith a 1:51.795, Chaz Davies got his best qualifying result of the year and Leon Camier qualified on the Italjet.

1)M Poggiali 2)D Pedrosa 3)S Jenkner 4)A de Angelis 5)A Dovizioso 6)A Vincent 7)P Nieto 8)L Cecchinello 9) Y Ui 10) M Giansanti 11)A Ballerini 12)S Perugini 13)J Lorenzo 14)M Asuma 15)M Kallio 16)J Olive 17) S Bianco 18) C Davies 19)G Borsoi 20)A Odriguez 21)M Fabrizio 22) J Smrz 23)G Scalvini 24)J Hules 25)S Sanna 26) J Simon 27) H Barbera 28)I Toth 29)A Baldolini 30)M Angeloni 31)A Bautista 32)A Brannetti 33)L Camier

250s:

Randy de Puniet restored some French sporting pride by claiming pole with a time of 1:48.359. Jay Vincent crashed on the last lap, but was uninjured.

1)R de Puniet 2)M Melandri 3)R Rolfo 4)S Porto 5) F Nieto 6)T Elias 7)C Stoner 8)A Debon 9) R Locatelli 10)E Alzamora 11)H Aoki 12)N Matsudo 13) F Battaini 14) S yuzy 15)D Checa 16)R Jara 17)T Sekigughi 18)V Philippe 19)H Marchand 20)J Janssen 21)E Bataille 22)L Haslam 23)J Vincent 24)H Faubel 25)D Heidolf