September 16, 2006 - Results of qualifying from Phillips Island

The starting order has been set for tomorrow's showdown at Phillips Island. It was an interesting qualifying session indeed....

Randy did very well... right up until the end. He held the top spot for a while, he held the second spot for a while... he settled in 9th.. a third row start for him tomorrow.

The top spot will be occupied by Nicky Hayden... he put down a spectacular time in the last 5 minutes of qualifying! Congrats Nick... it's good to see you back on top. Rossi struggled a little bit with his set up this afternoon. After he strapped the qualifiers to his rocket, he had a slight mishap on track and ran off. I thought it was over for him... then I thought again. It's Vale... he's a freak of nature. With everything stacked against him, he pulled out a final lap that will put him on the first row tomorrow. Shinya Nikano will also start from the first row tomorrow, rolling in at a surprising 2nd.

Ducati was obviously absent from the top ten.. I'm not quite sure what happened there. Maybe whatever the situation was, it will be remedied by tomorrow. Suzuki wasn't having their best session either, with Hopkins and Vermeulen finishing 15th and 16th respectively. The track temperature is vastly different from last week's race conditions, and seems to be varying greatly even between morning and afternoon runs. This can play hell on tire selection. Surely by tomorrow's race the teams will have the right tires for the conditions, and it will prove to be yet another fantastic race.

I have to give props to Dani Pedrosa who will be starting 4th row tomorrow. He is still suffering from the injury he sustained earlier in the week to his right knee. I heard chatter tonight that some of the other riders are accusing him of "milking" his injury... WTF?? I have yet to see any GP rider "milk" an injury, and I don't think this trend will start with Dani. If anything, they don't "milk" them enough. Hell, this season alone, we have seen Sete Gibernau ride through two surgeries on his collar bone (from the Catalunya crash), Marco participated in at least one race with a broken collar bone that he didn't even know about until the MRI results came back, and Rossi suffered through at least one race with broken bones in his hand.. riding on pain medication. Any one of these injuries would render me, and I dare say, any other average human being, useless for weeks... if not months!!

That'll do it for me tonight. I have successfully thinned the herd of brown bottles in my fridge yet again :) It's very important to rotate the stock and keep it fresh... I strive for excellence. I have posted the results of the qualifying session below.... enjoy!!!

Position	Rider	Manufacturer
1	Hayden	Honda
2	Nakano	Kawasaki
3	Rossi	Yamaha
4	Roberts, Jr	KR211V
5	Edwards	Yamaha
6	Checa	Yamaha
7	Melandri	Honda
8	Stoner	Honda
9	de Puniet	Kawasaki
10	Pedrosa	Honda
11	Tamada	Honda
12	Gibernau	Ducati
13	Capirossi	Ducati
14	Elias	Honda
15	Hopkins	Suzuki
16	Vermeulen	Suzuki
17	Hofmann	Ducati
18	Ellison	Yamaha
19	Cardoso	Ducati

Until next time......

Rubb'er Down :)

Kristen