At round 17 for Portugal Grand Prix qualifying
A second day of torrential rain and high winds forced this afternoon’s qualifying session to be cancelled. In many places the circuit was flooded, causing the cancellation on safety grounds and meaning that the grid for tomorrow’s race will be decided based on the fastest laps from the free practice sessions.
Although the circuit was submerged in the afternoon, conditions for the morning’s free practice session were not as bad and all riders took to the circuit to complete one hour of wet running, with every rider using Bridgestone’s wet tyres.
The session was increased in length to one hour after the disruption to yesterday’s first practice session. Before this weekend there had only been four fully wet sessions all year: warm-up at the German Grand Prix and the Czech Grand Prix, FP2 at Aragon and FP1 at the Australian Grand Prix.
The weather this weekend is making up for that though as so far this weekend only two of the scheduled four sessions have been run in their entirety with the Friday morning practice being heavily disrupted by rain and qualifying being cancelled altogether.
This means that Jorge Lorenzo will start from pole position tomorrow, ahead of Nicky Hayden and Valentino Rossi, with Casey Stoner, Ben Spies and Marco Melandri completing the second row.
The top six riders all set their best laptimes yesterday afternoon, at the end of the session when the conditions were drying. Randy de Puniet in eighth and Hector Barbera in fifteenth also set the fastest laps yesterday, whereas the rest of the field recorded their personal bests this morning.
This weekend is a new experience for Bridgestone as it is the first time since becoming Official Tyre Supplier that every session on Friday and Saturday has been wet. Under the regulations, if tomorrow’s warm-up session is also wet then each rider will receive an extra set of wet tyres for the race.
Tohru Ubukata – Manager, Bridgestone Motorcycle Tyre Development Department
“The weather this weekend has been torrential and the amount of rainfall has resulted in a lot of standing water on the circuit. The rainfall was so heavy that it soon soaked the track and also the runoff areas and so qualifying session was cancelled by the organisers on safety grounds.
Even though this morning was wetter and track temperature was lower than during yesterday afternoon’s practice, I am happy with our wet tyre performance because many riders continued with just one set and confirmed race distance durability this morning. Now we just have to wait and see what the weather will do for the race tomorrow as this will of course play a big role in deciding the teams’ race tyre choice. If it is dry it will be challenge for teams to arrive at the ideal setup with no dry running this weekend.”
Top ten from qualifying (Times taken from combined practice session results)
2010 Bridgestone wet compounds available: Front: Soft. Rear: Soft
Pos Rider Team Fastest lap (Sess) Gap Compounds – Front, Rear
1 Jorge Lorenzo Fiat Yamaha Team 1m48.522s (FP2) Soft, Soft
2 Nicky Hayden Ducati Team 1m48.657s (FP2) +0.135s Soft, Soft
3 Valentino Rossi Fiat Yamaha Team 1m48.883s (FP2) +0.361s Soft, Soft
4 Casey Stoner Ducati Team 1m49.061s (FP2) +0.539s Soft, Soft
5 Ben Spies Monster Yamaha Tech3 1m49.721s (FP2) +1.199s Soft, Soft
6 Marco Melandri San Carlo Honda Gresini 1m49.784s (FP2) +1.262s Soft, Soft
7 Andrea Dovizioso Repsol Honda Team 1m50.007s (FP3) +1.485s Soft, Soft
8 Randy de Puniet LCR Honda MotoGP 1m50.043s (FP2) +1.521s Soft, Soft
9 Colin Edwards Monster Yamaha Tech3 1m50.313s (FP3) +1.791s Soft, Soft
10 Marco Simoncelli San Carlo Honda Gresini 1m50.500s (FP3) +1.978s Soft, Soft
Weather: Wet. Ambient 16°C; Track 14°C ( Bridgestone measurement)
Bridgestone Motorsport Media Website: www.bridgestonemotorsportmedia.com
source; Bridgestone