Casey Stoner takes pole position for the Portuguese Grand Prix

In a session held in dry conditions after yesterday’s rain, Repsol Honda’s Australian rider Casey Stoner was the fastest in qualifying with a time of 1:37.188. Stoner rode a very consistent session, staying in the top three throughout, despite feeling discomfort in his left arm.

He was followed by his teammate Dani Pedrosa, just 13 thousandths behind. In fact, Dani held pole for many minutes, since most of the good lap times were being knocked down in the final part of the circuit, where the famous chicane is, and nobody seemed able to improve on his time.

Alongside the two Repsol Honda riders will be Britain’s Cal Crutchlow, who surprisingly made it onto the front row by taking that position from Jorge Lorenzo. The Mallorcan made a mistake at the start of his last flying lap, so tomorrow he will start from the second row, alongside Ben Spies and Álvaro Bautista, who both put in a great qualifying session.

The scare of the morning came just over 11 minutes from the end. Randy De Puniet was about to overtake Colin Edwards when he lost his front wheel mid-corner and took out the Texan rider. Colin, who did not expect to end up on the ground, took a heavy blow to the head, although the medical centre told us the most likely outcome is a broken collarbone.

Another scare was had by Iván Silva, when his bike began to weave as he exited a corner and, just when it seemed he had it under control, he almost “pulled a Biaggi” by lifting his front wheel. Fortunately he managed to control the bike and the incident ended with a broken fairing. Among the CRT machines, the best was Aleix Espargaró, even finishing ahead of Karel Abraham’s Ducati.