Indianapolis GP: Michelin qualifying report

Michelin rider Jorge Lorenzo (Fiat Yamaha Team YZR-M1-Michelin) scored a superb front-row start at Indianapolis this afternoon, edging fellow Michelin man Nicky Hayden (Repsol Honda RC212V-Michelin) onto the second row by just 0.094 seconds.

Lorenzo, Hayden and Randy de Puniet (Honda LCR RC212V-Michelin) all took their turn at the top during the session, de Puniet finally ending up sixth for a second-row start, two tenths ahead of Andrea Dovizioso (JiR Team Scot Honda RC212V-Michelin).

This afternoon's qualifying session was the first fully dry outing of the weekend, following this morning's damp final free session and yesterday's two rain-soaked opening sessions. Further heavy rainfall is forecast for tomorrow, when the final vestiges of 20Hurricane Ike are due in the Indianapolis area.

"It's been a good day, with not much dry-track time and therefore a lot of work," said Jean-Philippe Weber, Michelin's director of motorcycle racing. "By using three or four qualifiers at the end of the qualifying session riders only got half an hour or so to work on race tyre choice and find a good direction for tomorrow. This morning the track was ‘green', so we've had so little time, not enough time to go through our full range of tyres, so instead of trying each different tyre step by step, as usual, we sometimes took two steps today and missed out some tyres to find the best tyres more quickly. We think we'll use medium-hard to hard rears, because the track is a bit more demanding that we had expected. Qualifying was good: Jorge, Nicky, Randy and Andrea all did great jobs. Of course, the big question mark is the weather."

Lorenzo was delighted with his performance which follows an impressive San Marino GP a fortnight ago, when he took a front-row start and a brilliant second-place finish. "This shows we are getting back to our best," said the Spaniard. "I like this track, it's good for my style, and the tyres are working well, like they did at Misano."

-credit: michelin