Casey Stoner took a third pole position in a row, at Assen on Friday, having overcome a series of 'obstacles' and a determined attack from
Valentino Rossi and
Dani Pedrosa.
The reigning
MotoGP world champion has been on average half a second clear of his rivals in all dry sessions held since the start of last weekend's British Grand Prix, but poor morning weather changed his Desmosedici's balance.
"This afternoon was a lot windier than yesterday and the rain this morning meant that the track conditions weren't at their optimum: the front was pushing in a lot of corners where you really have to rely on it, so that made life ten times more difficult than it should be!" said Casey.
Then, during his last run on race tyres, the antenna located near the finish line that sends data to the bike's transponder wasn't working; Stoner could not see his lap times on his dash and they didn't show up on the circuit monitors.
However the problem was quickly solved, and it was Stoner, Pedrosa and Rossi who battled for pole in an exciting climax to the session, with the Ducati rider's final effort remaining just out of reach of championship leaders.
"Before we put the qualifiers in we had that problem with the lap time transmitter and I didn't know how fast I was going," confirmed the Australian. "Luckily Dorna managed to fix it before we put the qualifying tyres in and I was feeling confident, but the extra grip offered by the softer rear put even more pressure on the front and I almost lost it on several occasions during the last three laps.
"To have qualified on pole despite all those things is fantastic!
"The rain this morning also meant that we didn't get many laps in on slick race tyres today but that is the same situation for everybody and we did enough yesterday to be confident about tomorrow's race.
