MotoGP news

Stoner dominates qualifying at Donington Park

Casey Stoner was the man to beat in a wet qualifying session at Donington Park on Saturday afternoon. The Australian topped the qualifying session from start to finish and at the end of the one-hour session the Ducati rider was half a second ahead of Valentino Rossi and Chris Vermeulen who will join Stoner on the front row. Ben Spies impressed the Britons with P8.

Unlike Friday the rain fell down from the skies on Saturday morning and afternoon. It promised to become an interesting fight for Sunday's front row. Chris Vermeulen and Casey Stoner were the first to set a flying lap in a fight for pole position. It took a while before the competition got even close to their lap times who were the only one's under the 1m40's.

With twenty minutes left in the session Vermeulen improved the fastest time and set a 1,39,876. He didn't stay on top of the time sheets for long though. Five minutes later Casey Stoner went four tenths of a second faster that the Suzuki rider.

In the final minutes of Saturday's qualifying session Casey Stoner improved his own fastest lap time and made sure no one would come even close to the reigning world champion. Stoner will be joined in Sunday's British Grand Prix on the front row by Valentino Rossi and Chris Vermeulen. Vermeulen scored his best qualifying result of the season today.

James Toseland had a disappointing qualifying session. The Briton fell off his bike in front of his home crowd and had to settle for 16th position.

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