Jorge Lorenzo takes the first pole of 2012 at Losail

The Spanish rider has become the poleman of the premier class after a fantastic qualifying session in Qatar, where a superb strategy, in which he saved two runs on the soft tyres, meant that his rival in the fight to be the fastest, Casey Stoner, could not cope with him when the moment of truth arrived.

In the first laps Lorenzo and Crutchlow were leading, with Barberá 3rd on the satellite Ducati, until Stoner put on his work overalls and set the best time on the hard tyre. Meanwhile, the first CRT was Randy’s. The scare was given by Pasini, who locked up at the front and almost went down.

Then came the crash of Iván Silva while he was fighting to get out of the last position he was in, 44 minutes from the end, while Dani Pedrosa had problems with one of his bikes which would not start. Furthermore, just when it seemed they had fixed it, he had to come back in because the bike stalled.

The crash of Petrucci, with one of the CRTs slowest in top speed, which is also the only one that uses a tubular chassis, happened 38 minutes from the end. Meanwhile, the super slow-motion camera let us see the impressive flames from Jorge Lorenzo’s bike.

With half an hour left in qualifying, the positions were as follows: Stoner, Lorenzo, Bradl, Hayden, Crutchlow, Spies, Dovizioso, Pedrosa, Barberá, Abraham, Rossi, De Puniet, Edwards, Espargaró, Pirro, Pasini, Hernández, Petrucci, Ellison and Silva.

Randy De Puniet also went down again, for the second time this weekend, which left his Aprilia CRT completely destroyed with 19 minutes to go, just before James Ellison, who also lost his front wheel. Pasini also hit the ground and watched his bike start to burn.

But everything began to change with 16 minutes to go, when the riders started to fit the soft tyres to attack Casey Stoner’s provisional pole, with Crutchlow surprising in second place and Spies third. With 10 minutes left, Jorge Lorenzo dropped below 55, setting a time of 1:54.993. With this time, all the riders began looking for their best grid time. The first to see how difficult it was to match Jorge’s time was Spies, who crashed at turn 2 and said goodbye to the fight for pole. Stoner took advantage of that moment to make his first run on the soft tyre. But Stoner’s time was beaten again by Lorenzo, who improved to 1:54.634, shortly before Abraham’s crash.

With that time, Lorenzo takes his 19th pole in the premier class with Stoner behind him and a surprising Cal Crutchlow in third place. The first CRT was Colin Edwards’, 13th.

The top 10 looked like this: