MotoGP News - Pedrosa snags pole at Le Mans
May 16, 2009
Dani Pedrosa will start closest to the finish line in tomorrow's Grand Prix De France. Joining him on the front row are Fiat Yamaha's Jorge Lorenzo and Ducati Marlboro superstar, Casey Stoner. Where's Rossi?? Never fear, he qualified fourth and will share his second row start with Andrea Dovizioso and former teammate Colin Edwards - who by the way was brilliant in both FP rounds as well this week.
FP1 was marred by rain on Thursday and ironically cut short after being bumped back up to an hour-long session. FP2 was run for the full hour, and probably very exciting, although I missed it, so I can only report to you that Sete Gibernau suffered yet another collar bone fracture as a result of a one-for-the-books high side and is subsequently out of the race tomorrow . Here's to the fast and flawless [recovery] Gibbers - we'll miss you tomorrow!
Randy DePuniet qualified in the 10th position as a result of today's round. He is coming in strong after a fourth place finish in Motegi, and may have pushed just a little too hard amidst the cheers from his hometown crowd. He lost the front end of his Honda coming out of the finish line stretch into the fastest corner on the Le Mans circuit. They estimated he went down at nearly 160 mph. His bike was reduced to confetti, but his recovery was amazingly graceful. He never stopped his forward motion from the slide, got his feet under him, ran for the bike, abandoned the bike (after a .0005 second assesment of the damage), jumped the tire wall and made his way back to the garage where his back-up bike was waiting for him.
Marco Melandri washed out in the same corner on his pseudo-Kawasaki Hayate racing machine. He too got back on and finished the round, resulting in a 9th place start for tomorrow. It sucks to see man and machine hurdling off the track at triple digits - what sucks worse is the fact that Melandri and his pit crew have to salvage as many parts as possible from the downed machine in order to be able to continue racing - due to lack of factory support. I'll stop there before this gets ugly :)
Rizla Suzuki's pair, Chris Vermeulen and Loris Capirossi made the top ten today and will start 7th and 8th respectively. Mika Kallio slapped down some very impressive times early on in the session, but was only able to finally eek out a 14th place start on the grid - still watching that kid (I'm sayin'..... mad skillz.... seriously).
Nicky Hayden is working with a new crew chief. The paddock chatter reveals that this should lead to better communication and overall improvement for Nick - aaaaand GO!
Okay - before this write-up shotguns itself any further into the depths of asshattery, here is the official starting order for tomorrow. I'm off to find some trouble to get into - cause that's what I do best!
| 1 | D. Pedrosa | Honda |
| 2 | J. Lorenzo | Yamaha |
| 3 | C. Stoner | Ducati |
| 4 | V. Rossi | Yamaha |
| 5 | A. Dovizioso | Honda |
| 6 | C. Edwards | Yamaha |
| 7 | C. Vermeulen | Suzuki |
| 8 | L. Capirossi | Suzuki |
| 9 | M. Melandri | Kawasaki |
| 10 | R. De Puniet | Honda |
| 11 | T. Elias | Honda |
| 12 | J. Toseland | Yamaha |
| 13 | N. Hayden | Ducati |
| 14 | M. Kallio | Ducati |
| 15 | Y. Takahashi | Honda |
| 16 | N. Canepa | Ducati |
Until next time....
Rubb'er Down
Kristen