He may have traded in his gold boots, helmet and gloves for a more restrained red attire, but Fiat Yamaha´s Jorge Lorenzo is showing no signs of settling for anything less than the best in his rookie MotoGP season. The Spaniard cut a second off his morning time to head the timesheets at his home track in the afternoon session, clocking a 1´40.321 lap of the circuit at which he has won the last two 250cc Grands Prix.

Lorenzo is on a roll after his pole position and second place at the opening race of the season in Qatar, flying high with his Michelin-shod Yamaha M1. Bringing the self-titled `Lorenshow´ to European soil for the first time this weekend since his move up to the premier class, the 20 year-old has an extremely healthy following already filling up the grandstands at the Circuito de Jerez.

Also mirroring the Qatar visit, the top three was an all-Yamaha affair, with Lorenzo’s team-mate and five-time World Champion Valentino Rossi trailing his youthful factory team counterpart by just four hundredths of a second. Rossi has a proven pedigree at Jerez, including victory in last year’s race, and has started well in his quest to catch up with series leader and current title-holder Casey Stoner.

Colin Edwards completes the Yamaha triumvirate onboard the Tech 3 satellite version of the M1, down on power but high on enthusiasm in Jerez. Behind him, countryman and former World Champion Nicky Hayden and Dani Pedrosa lead the Honda charge on their factory machinery. Hayden is using the same chassis run by Pedrosa at Losail, with some modifications to suit his riding style, after an unsuccessful experiment with the 2007 HRC212V in Qatar.

Jerez is not one of the tracks favoured by Ducati Marlboro’s reigning MotoGP World Champion Stoner, who suffered a lowside crash at turn seven. Luckily for the Australian he escaped uninjured in the incident, although he was unable to improve upon his morning time and rounded off the top six.

Behind Stoner, two of the impressive MotoGP rookies took further strides onboard their respective satellite machinery. JiR Team Scot’s Andrea Dovizioso and Tech 3 Yamaha star James Toseland were seventh and eighth in the standings, although the latter took a hit in the first MotoGP crash of the day on turn three. Unlike at the Official Test in February, at which the Briton picked up an ankle injury, Toseland escaped unscathed and was back in the saddle a few minutes later.

Rizla Suzuki’s Loris Capirossi and San Carlo Honda Gresini rookie Alex de Angelis propped up the top ten, whilst there were additional crashes for Alice Team rider Sylvain Guintoli, De Angelis´ team-mate Shinya Nakano and Kawasaki’s John Hopkins.
 

The quickest rider in this year’s 250cc testing visits to the Circuito de Jerez, Red Bull KTM’s Mika Kallio put himself on provisional pole for Sunday’s Gran Premio bwin.com de España with a 1'43.111 lap of the Spanish track.

Kallio’s time was recorded on his eighteenth lap of the afternoon session, putting the Finn ahead of the morning’s fastest rider, Lotus Aprilia returnee Alex Debon, by two tenths of a second. Debon was the only Aprilia representative to place on the provisional front row, dominated by KTM with further representation from home rider Julian Simon and Kallio’s team-mate, Hiroshi Aoyama.

Emmi-Caffe Latte rider Thomas Luthi is pencilled in to head the second row, joined by Mapfre Aspar’s crowd favourite Alvaro Bautista, 250cc newcomer Lukas Pesek and Pepe Team Toth´s Hector Barbera.

Winner of the opening Grand Prix of the season, Mattia Pasini had a slow start to his Jerez visit. The Polaris World Aprilia rider was over a second down on Kallio’s lap time to finish ninth, with the top ten completed by Yuki Takahashi.

There were crashes for, amongst others, Marco Simoncelli and Karel Abraham over the course of a frantic 250cc session. Simoncelli also jostled elbows with Kallio in the early going.
 

Spanish rider Nico Terol maintained his position at the head of the 125cc timesheets in Jerez to take provisional pole for the 125cc Gran Premio bwin.com de Jerez, onboard the Jack&Jones WRB bike new to the 19 year-old this season. If Terol can hold on in tomorrow´s second timed classification session, then it would be his first pole position for a World Championship race.

Terol cut a second off his morning practice time, laying down a 1’48.078 lap of his home track. In doing so, he edged out new team-mate for 2008 Simone Corsi by two tenths of a second. The remaining Jack&Jones WRB rider participating in this weekend’s race is Axel Pons, son of former World Championship star Sito and debutant in Jerez.

Polaris World’s Bradley Smith was once again amongst the frontrunners after only managing to finish 23rd in the morning session, moving up to a provisional front row position late on in the opening qualifying run. The Briton overcooked an attempt at a potential pole lap on one of his final sprints, running wide with two minutes remaining on the clock.

The provisional front row is completed by German Stefan Bradl, who sneaked into fourth place much as he did in the opening race of the season in Qatar. Behind him, Belson Derbi’s local boy Pol Espargaro, American sophomore Stevie Bonsey, Ajo Motorsport newcomer Mike di Meglio and Italian maestro Raffaele de Rosa make up row two.

Youngest top five finisher in Grand Prix history Scott Redding and current series leader Sergio Gadea complete the top ten, with the latter still sore after braving a dislocated collarbone en route to victory at Losail three weeks ago. His Bancaja team-mate and reigning World Champion Gabor Talmacsi finished eleventh.

from InfoMotoGP