Sebastian Porto leading Repsol riders in Qatar.
The Argentinean rider reaffirms his pole position in the 250cc, with Fonsi Nieto eighth; Alex Barros is second in MotoGP, Nicky Hayden fourth and Rubén Xaus drops back to seventh.
Once again the heat played the leading role at the Losail circuit, where the thermometers reached 36 degrees Celsius on the second practice day of the Qatar Grand Prix. Many riders complained yesterday about the lacking grip on the track, but today the track conditions improved considerably, allowing most of the riders improve the lap times set on Thursday.
In the MotoGP class, the times were improved by almost two and a half seconds, with Carlos Checa being the only rider capable to beat the limit of the 59s setting 1’58.988. Second behind Checa was Repsol Honda Team rider Alex Barros, who had a good performance on the second practice day, as did his team-mate Nicky Hayden, who set the fourth fastest time. Both Repsol riders had shown already in the morning practice that they would be highly competitive on the Losail track, setting the third and fourth fastest time respectively. They were closely followed by the provisional pole man, Rubén Xaus, who set the fifth fastest time in the morning. In the afternoon, both Repsol Honda Team riders stayed among the top ten, just as Xaus, all of them focussed on their bike’s settings for the race. Ten minutes before the end of the session, several riders started their attacks to get the pole and improve Checa’s time, among of which were Barros, Hayden, Gibernau, Capirossi, and Rossi. Final result: Checa pole, Barros second, Hayden fourth and Xaus seventh.
The practices in the 250cc class were clearly dominated by Repsol rider Sebastián Porto, who finally managed to keep the pole with an advantage of almost half a second over the second classified rider and leader of the overall standings Dani Pedrosa. Porto had already set the fastest time in the morning, improving by almost half a second the provisional pole time he had set yesterday. In the afternoon, Porto maintained the leading spot almost throughout the session and finally managed to set an even faster time than yesterday, improving it by a bit more than two seconds. Behind Pedrosa, second, there is De Puniet, third, over a second behind the Argentinean rider’s time. Fonsi Nieto, third fastest yesterday, was not able to keep his position on the front row of the grid and dropped back to the second, setting the eighth fastest time.
In the 125cc, the morning started very well for the Repsol riders, with Pablo Nieto fourth and his team-mate Sergio Gadea thirteenth. In the afternoon, with higher air and track temperatures, as well as a considerable reduction of humidity, the riders were able to improve the times set yesterday by a bit more than four seconds. Jorge Lorenzo, who improved the pole time set yesterday by Andrea Dovizioso, took the pole. Pablo Nieto improved several positions with regard to yesterday, improving the times set yesterday by a bit over five seconds, thus moving up from eleventh to sixth. His team-mate Sergio Gadea, was only able to improve one position with regard to the first qualifying session, setting the nineteenth fastest time that will allow him to start tomorrow from the fifth row of the starting grid.
