Rossi takes provisional pole

Valentino Rossi has taken the provisional pole position after the first qualifying session for Sunday’s German GP.

The Italian knocked almost a second off his time from the morning’s practice session to finish the afternoon with a 1:24.335 on his last lap.

Max Biaggi was just 0.035 seconds behind Rossi but the performance of the day came from Proton’s Jeremy McWilliams who put in a storming ride on the two-stroke KR3 to take provisional third place on the grid.

The British rider crashed heavily during the session destroying his first bike. He was only slightly injured and managed to get back out on the spare bike but the team is running very short on parts for the two strokes and cannot rebuild the crashed machine. Another incident could leave him without a bike to ride on Sunday despite his excellent times.

Carlos Checa maintained his position in fourth followed by Troy Bayliss, Sete Gibernau, Marco Melandri and Yamaha’s Norick Abe

Colin Edwards was back out on track after this morning’s dramatic escape from a 160mph fireball (see the link on the right) but the time he lost in the morning left him well behind in setting his bike up. He finished the session in 16th.

Britains Chris Burns decided to pull out of the race still suffering from the broken collar bone he sustained at Donnington.

Check back regularly throughout the weekend for full updates on the German GP plus all the action from the World Superbikes at Brands Hatch.

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