Fiat Yamaha Team
2009 Indianapolis Grand Prix
Qualifying
Saturday, 29th August 2009

Ambient temperature: 27 degrees
Track temperature: 37 degrees
Humidity: 40%

Front row for Fiat Yamaha pair as sun shines at Indianapolis

The sun finally shone on MotoGP at Indianapolis today and yesterday's soaking track was long forgotten, giving the riders the chance to get to grips with their bikes on a dry surface. It was another double front-row for Fiat Yamaha riders Jorge Lorenzo and Valentino Rossi, the Spaniard claiming his 12th straight front row of the season with second on the grid and Rossi his seventh consecutive with third.

Lorenzo, who was second fastest behind Dani Pedrosa this morning, went into the lead after just ten minutes of this afternoon's qualifying session and looked very strong from then on, improving his time several times before Pedrosa knocked him off the top spot with 20 minutes to go. The 22-year-old Spaniard pushed hard in the final stages but was not quite able to edge his compatriot off pole position, finishing the session 0.506 seconds adrift.

Rossi meanwhile was consistently in the top three until he was edged out by Alex de Angelis with a little over ten minutes remaining. The championship leader was able to make a last-minute improvement to move back onto the front row with his final lap but feels he is still lacking rhythm and pace. He and his team will be looking for some overnight improvements in order to put him in the best shape for tomorrow's race, which starts at 1400 Eastern Time.

 
Jorge Lorenzo #99
Position: 2nd   Time: 1'40.236   Laps: 31
“I’m happy about this qualifying session because we made a big step with our setting from this morning and even from the start of the session. Unfortunately we couldn’t improve any more in the final laps and it’s now six or seven races since I’ve been on pole which is strange for me, because doing one fast lap is usually one of my strong points! The important thing however is that we’re on the front row, we have a good race pace and we are ready to challenge for the win tomorrow.”
 

Valentino Rossi #46
Position: 3rd   Time: 1'40.609   Laps: 27
“We’re on the front row and this is important but honestly we don’t have enough pace at the moment and I can’t ride how I want to. We don’t have quite enough grip to enable us to push at the maximum. We did a lot of work this afternoon but we’re still not at our best and so now we all need to work to find a way to make another step for tomorrow. We have the warm-up still to use and we will try to be competitive for the race.”   
 
 
Daniele Romagnoli, Team Manager
“We are on target and happy to be on the front row, even if we were hoping for pole position. The team made some important modifications to the set-up and this afternoon we had a much faster pace than this morning; we have a good race pace now. We still have some work to do because Pedrosa looks very strong and we need to close the gap to him, but we’re confident that we can improve the package a bit more and set Jorge up for a great race tomorrow.”
 
 
Davide Brivio, Team Manager
“We need to continue to work because we’re not yet fast enough! Of course being on the front row is important but now we have to focus on finding the right improvements for tomorrow. We have some work to do before the race and then we will see where we are in warm-up tomorrow.”

For information on the Fiat Yamaha team visit the team's new website at www.FiatYamahaTeam.it or the official website at http://www.yamaha-racing.com/Racing/
For information on the MotoGP, visit the official website at www.motogp.com