Fiat Yamaha team rider Valentino Rossi qualified second in Brno today, despite a soaking wet day at the Czech track as the MotoGP rain curse struck once again.

Fiat Yamaha team rider Valentino Rossi qualified second in Brno today, despite a soaking wet day at the Czech track as the MotoGP rain curse struck once again. Tomorrow will be the Italian’s seventh front-row start of the season and he will once again share it with Casey Stoner, who qualified on pole today.

After heavy rain overnight this morning’s practice was run on a damp track, with Rossi finishing the session in fifth. From then on the weather worsened and the best laps of the afternoon qualifying session were done in the first half, before too much standing water gathered on the track and the conditions deteriorated even more. Rossi’s Bridgestone rain tyres worked well and he was able to set some consistent laps early on, good enough to secure him the all-important front row spot. The forecast for tomorrow is mixed but the 29-year-old is confident that he will be in good shape to fight at the front, come rain or shine.

Valentino Rossi - Position: 2nd Time: 2'12.846 Laps: 15

“I hope that we are in good shape for tomorrow, if it’s wet or dry. For sure though, like everyone else, I hope it will be dry because the conditions today were really terrible! After twenty minutes this afternoon there was too much water and it was impossible to improve the setting of the bike or the time, so I am glad I was able to do some good laps at the beginning. I think I can be more competitive in the dry, because also we have a few modifications to try, so hopefully it will be dry all day tomorrow to give us the best chance. Let’s keep hoping and see how we go!”

Davide Brivio - Team Manager

“We’re happy because we’ve reached our target of getting on the first row despite the difficult conditions today. Valentino did very well to make the most of the early part of the session and get some good laps in before it got so much worse. We are expecting tomorrow to be drier so we will try to make the most of this front row to get a good start and then hopefully fight for the win.”

Disastrous wet qualifying for Lorenzo leaves him last in Brno

A soaking wet day at Brno brought about a depressing day’s work for Jorge Lorenzo, the Fiat Yamaha Team rookie finishing the day in last place. It is a far cry from the consecutive pole positions with which the youngster started his year in MotoGP and he is faced with a difficult task tomorrow to make any kind of headway through the field.

Lorenzo was unlucky to miss the driest part of the qualifying hour, when he was inside the garage working on modifying his bike in order to try to find more grip. During the last forty minutes conditions deteriorated even more and there was no chance for him to improve his time, unable as he was to find any kind of grip or confidence in his tyres. His time of 2’23.701 left him outside of the 107% qualifying cut-off, but he will be allowed to race tomorrow at the discretion of Race Direction.

Jorge Lorenzo - Position: 17th Time: 2'23.701 Laps: 12

“It’s been a bad day! At the start of the qualifying it was drier and this is when I was in the garage trying to improve the bike with my team; I missed my chance and this is when the others set their fastest laps. I have had days almost as bad as this before, but I have to say that the fault is not all mine. I think that it is evident at the moment that our tyres are not working as they should. I am a professional however and I have to wait and have confidence in Michelin to find the right way forward. For tomorrow it’s going to be important to get a good start and try to get in the top ten. The surface is very good but we don’t have the grip we need, so whatever happens with the weather, it will be very hard.”

Daniele Romagnoli - Team Manager

“A really bad day for us; the worst qualifying session of the season. We already had some issues with front grip in the dry yesterday and we thought that in the rain we would be able to improve. Unfortunately things went even more wrong today and we couldn’t find any grip for both the front and the rear. We tried all the tyres available and, even with the softest, Jorge didn’t have enough confidence to ride at a decent pace. We had already tried some different settings this morning to try to improve the grip and this afternoon we tried some even bigger modifications, but the bike didn’t react to the changes in the way we hoped because of the low grip level from the tyres. Tomorrow will be a really hard race because we’re starting from last and, even if we can improve our pace in the dry, it’s still going to be very difficult.”