Tetsuya Harada looked to have lost his overnight pole to Daijiro Katoh, after the Honda rider led the way for the majority of today's final qualifier at Estoril. However, the Aprilia star regained pole with a stunning late effort that once again smashed the circuit record.
Coming into today's crucial second qualifier Harada had held a slender 0.124secs advantage over championship leader Katoh, but it had been the latter who had dominated the morning free practice session, with a time quicker than Harada's pole effort from yesterday, setting the scene for another thrilling duel between the two Japanese riders.
Katoh's nearest rival this morning had been Ulsterman Jeremy Mc
Williams (fourth fastest behind Melandri yesterday) who was just 0.195secs behind the Honda, with Harada third, but it would be this afternoon's session that counted.
Into the hour and as has become the norm in 250cc qualifying, there was a relatively slow start to the proceeding's with the order at the front unchanged as the 15 minute mark came and went.
The breakthrough came two minutes later when Katoh finally fulfilled the potential he had shown all weekend by snatching pole with an all time 250cc lap record of 1min 42.205secs – leaving Harada to find 0.451secs.
Katoh's improvement was swiftly followed by David Checa, who moved up one place to fifth, on his Team Fomma Honda, while Roberto Rolfo made a similar improvement to seventh, but both were 1sec away from the lead Telefonica machine.
One person who was trying a little to hard was Sebastien Porto (eleventh fastest) who threw his Dark Dog Yamaha Kurz machine down the road shortly before the halfway mark in the session was reached.
Another lull in the action then followed until Harada attacked Katoh's time with just over 20mins to go, but the MS Aprilia star fell short by 0.451secs, indicating the strength of Katoh's earlier lap, on a day when Melandri and McWilliams were still to improve.
