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Ducati Marlboro Team riders Casey Stoner and Loris Capirossi
will start tomorrow's Australian GP from the first and second rows of the grid
following a thrilling qualifying session at Phillip Island this afternoon. Both
men took their turn at the top during qualifying, Stoner ending up third, six
tenths off pole, and Capirossi fifth quickest, a further 0.274 seconds back.
This will be Stoner's tenth front-row start of the season so far.
The recently crowned World Champion - who today received a
letter of congratulations and good wishes from Australian Prime Minister John
Howard - isn't concerned that he's not on pole because his pace on race tyres
has been devastatingly quick here and Phillip Island is a fast, open circuit
where overtaking isn't an issue for fast, brave riders. The Aussie was
relentlessly quickest in all three previous sessions, using race tyres, and is
confident of a good home GP tomorrow despite a crash during this morning's damp
practice session. Japanese GP winner Capirossi made the best of the only fully
dry session of a cold and damp weekend to put himself in with a chance of
another great race.
CASEY STONER, 3rd fastest, 1m
29.816s
"Qualifying was probably our worse session so far this weekend
and the front row or the second row is okay here. We went out quite early with a
qualifying tyre because every other session had been interrupted by rain so we
thought we'd get in a decent qualifying lap in case the rain started, but the
rain never came, so it probably wasn't the best idea as we only had one
qualifying tyre left for the end of the session. We felt like we could've gone
at least a second quicker than that, unfortunately I got held up by other riders
on both of my laps. That last lap Tamada got in my road big time and pretty much
blew the lap to pieces, then I made a small mistake that added a few more
tenths. Looking at the race tomorrow we're pretty happy, we think we've got a
very good setting at the moment and we're happy with our race tyres. We're
running pretty hard tyres, like everybody else, and everything's looking really
good for us."
LORIS CAPIROSSI, 5th
fastest, 1m 30.090s
"I'm happy with fifth fastest because we have
worked very well as a team. We used the settings we used during our winter tests
here and they are working well. We made good use of the qualifying session to do
all the tests that we hadn't been able to do yesterday or this morning due to
the rain. I rode a lot of laps this afternoon, 14 or 15 in a row, which helped
me to understand what we need to do tomorrow. I have quite a good feeling with
the bike, even if conditions aren't the best because it's very cold. I think we
can do well tomorrow. Starting from the second row is good enough and if we get
a good start we will see what happens."
from Ducati Marlboro press
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