Biaggi claims provisional Rio pole

Yamaha’s soon-to-be-ex rider Max Biaggi has slotted his Yamaha M1 on provisional pole at the Nelson Piquet Circuit in Rio ahead of Saturday’s Brazilian Grand Prix.

His time of 1:51.854 pipped Valentino Rossi’s RCV to the place by just over a tenth of a second. Ominously for Honda, Carlos Checa confirmed Yamaha’s continuing improvement – posting a time of 1:51975 to take third spot ahead of Alex Barros on the West Honda Pons NSR.

Rossi’s only title rival, his Repsol Honda teammate Tohru Ukawa qualified 11th on the provisional grid, just ahead of Jeremy McWilliams.

There’s no word yet on Biaggi’s replacement at Yamaha for 2003, nor any definitive statement on where he go, but current rumours put him, bizarrely, on a ride with the satellite Tech 3 Yamaha squad. We’ll bring you more news on this as we get it…

MotoGP:

1)M Biaggi 2)V Rossi 3)C Checa 4)A Barros 5)N Abe 6)O Jacque 7)N Aoki 8)S Nakano 9)K Roberts 10)G McCoy 12)J McWilliams 13)D Kato 14)J van de Goorbergh 15)L Capirossi 16)T Harada 17)S Gibernau 18)R Laconi 19)J Hopkins 20)JL Cardoso

250:

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

125:

1)M Poggiali 2)A Vincent 3)P Nieto 4)G Talmasci 5)D Pedrosa 6)M Kallio 7)S Jenkner 8)N Ueda 9)L Cecchinello 10)A Dovizioso 11)H Barbera 12)Y Ui 13)M Giansanti 14)M Azuma 15)G Borsoi 16)J Olive 17)S Sanna 18)A de Angelis 19)J Lorenzo 20)K Nohles 21)M Simoncelli 22)S Perugini 23)T Luthi 24)M Fabrizio 25)A Ballerini 26)C Pistoni 27)S Bianco 28)M Angeloni 29)C Davies 30)D Giuseppetti 31)I Toth 32)A Baldolini