Sepang, Oct 12: After smashing the pole record time at the Sepang circuit in first qualifying Friday, Valentino Rossi yesterday turned up the heat on his MotoGP rivals with a string of scorching laps and a significantly improved time in the final session. The World Champion, who could retain his crown with victory here in tomorrow's delayed race which starts at 15:30h local time, raised the bar after just five laps with a new record time of 2'03.508 before effectively securing pole position with ten minutes remaining of the session in 2'02.480. "We decided to change tactic for today's qualifying session," revealed Rossi afterwards. "We have two qualifying tyres and decided to use one midway through the session and one at the end because we usually run out of time. To set a 2'02.4 is fantastic. We just need to choose a tyre for the race now but we will wait until tomorrow." Carlos Checa came closest to threatening Rossi's superiority with a late charge to second place in an impressive time of 2'02.885, improving his provisional time by around two seconds despite crashing into team-mate Marco Melandri early in the session.

Makoto Tamada dropped one place from provisional second to third but starts from the front row for the second successive race, just ahead of last year's winner Max Biaggi, who starts from fourth.


Bureau Report