GP qualifying times from Estoril

Alex Barros has snatched provisional pole from under the nose of Daijiro Kato, by just 7/1000ths of a second ahead of Sunday’s Portuguese GP at Estoril.

The Brazilian rider has consistently been the top two-stroke rider this season. And on a track where the power advantage of the four-stroke machines is negated by the tight turns of the back section of the 2.61-mile circuit, Barros blitzed the existing lap record by over half a second with a time of 1:40.112.

His West Honda Pons squad have squeezed something special from the NSR for the this race – both Barros and teammate Loris Capirossi posting higher top speeds than any four-strokes except Valentino Rossi’s!

MotoGP:

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

250s:

1)M Melandri (1:42.106) 2)R Rolfo 3)F Battaini 4)T Elias 5)E Alzamora 6)F Nieto 7)S Porto 8)A Debon 9)N Matsudo 10)R de Puniet 11)H Aoki 12)R Locatelli 13)E Bataile 14)L Haslam 15)J Vincent 16)S Yuzy 17)C Stoner 18)J Hules 19)H Faubel 20)D Checa 21)D Heidolf 22)E Nigon 23)R Jara 24)G Lefort

125s

1)M Poggiali (1:46.872) 2) Y Ui 3)S Jenckner 4)D Pedrosa 5)S Sanna 6)M Giansanti 7)A Vincent 8)A de Angelis 9)G Talmasci 10)L Cecchinello 11)J Olive 12)S Bianco 13)M Kallio 14)G Borsoi 15)H Barbera 16)A Dovizioso 17)M Fabrizio 18)N Ueda 19)M Azuma 20)P Nieto 21)K Nohles 22)M Sabbatani 23)A Baldolini 24)J Lorenzo 25)S Perugini 26)T Luthri 27)A Ballerini 28)I Toth 29)M Angeloni 30)M Simnocelli 31)C Davies 32)C Pistoni 33)J Simon