Front row start for Valentino Rossi at wet Brno

Fiat Yamaha team rider Valentino Rossi qualified second in Brno today, despite a soaking wet day at the Czech track as the MotoGP rain curse struck once again. Tomorrow will be the Italian's seventh front-row start of the season and he will once again share it with Casey Stoner, who qualified on pole today.

After heavy rain overnight this morning's practice was run on a damp track, with Rossi finishing the session in fifth. From then on the weather worsened and the best laps of the afternoon qualifying session were done in the first half, before too much standing water gathered on the track and the conditions deteriorated even more.

Rossi's Bridgestone rain tyres worked well and he was able to set some consistent laps early on, good enough to secure him the all-important front row spot. The forecast for tomorrow is mixed but the 29-year-old is confident that he will be in good shape to fight at the front, come rain or shine.

"I hope that we are in good shape for tomorrow, if it's wet or dry. For sure though, like everyone else, I hope it will be dry because the conditions today were really terrible! After twenty minutes this afternoon there was too much water and it was impossible to improve the setting of the bike or the time, so I am glad I was able to do some good laps at the beginning.

I think I can be more competitive in the dry, because also we have a few modifications to try, so hopefully it will be dry all day tomorrow to give us the best chance. Let's keep hoping and see how we go!"

"We're happy because we've reached our target of getting on the first row despite the difficult conditions today. Valentino did very well to make the most of the early part of the session and get some good laps in before it got so much worse. We are expecting tomorrow to be drier so we will try to make the most of this front row to get a good start and then hopefully fight for the win."

A soaking wet day at Brno brought about a depressing day's work for Jorge Lorenzo, the Fiat Yamaha Team rookie finishing the day in last place. It is a far cry from the consecutive pole positions with which the youngster started his year in MotoGP and he is faced with a difficult task tomorrow to make any kind of headway through the field.

Lorenzo was unlucky to miss the driest part of the qualifying hour, when he was inside the garage working on modifying his bike in order to try to find more grip. During the last forty minutes conditions deteriorated even more and there was no chance for him to improve his time, unable as he was to find any kind of grip or confidence in his tyres. His time of 2'23.701 left him outside of the 107% qualifying cut-off, but he will be allowed to race tomorrow at the discretion of Race Direction.

"It's been a bad day! At the start of the qualifying it was drier and this is when I was in the garage trying to improve the bike with my team; I missed my chance and this is when the others set their fastest laps. I have had days almost as bad as this before, but I have to say that the fault is not all mine.

I think that it is evident at the moment that our tyres are not working as they should. I am a professional however and I have to wait and have confidence in Michelin to find the right way forward. For tomorrow it's going to be important to get a good start and try to get in the top ten.

The surface is very good but we don't have the grip we need, so whatever happens with the weather, it will be very hard."

"A really bad day for us; the worst qualifying session of the season. We already had some issues with front grip in the dry yesterday and we thought that in the rain we would be able to improve. Unfortunately things went even more wrong today and we couldn't find any grip for both the front and the rear. We tried all the tyres available and, even with the softest, Jorge didn't have enough confidence to ride at a decent pace.

We had already tried some different settings this morning to try to improve the grip and this afternoon we tried some even bigger modifications, but the bike didn't react to the changes in the way we hoped because of the low grip level from the tyres. Tomorrow will be a really hard race because we're starting from last and, even if we can improve our pace in the dry, it's still going to be very difficult."

Tech 3 Yamaha duo Colin Edwards and James Toseland are determined to put in strong performances in tomorrow's Czech Republic GP in Brno after a difficult rain-soaked qualifying session this afternoon.

Edwards will start tomorrow's 22-lap race from an uncharacteristically lowly 15th position on the grid as he completed 10 laps in a session dominated by torrential rain, with parts of the circuit waterlogged by the end of qualifying.

Like Edwards, British rider Toseland worked tirelessly to find grip improvements with his Tech 3 team and Michelin engineers, but he will start one place further back in 16th place on the grid. He walked away unhurt from a crash at the first corner with 25 minutes remaining.

Although Toseland's time of 2.23.303 was outside of the required qualification time, the British rider will start tomorrow's race, which is the 12th round of the 2008 MotoGP world championship

Forecasts are for improved weather tomorrow, with the race expected to take place under cloudy but dry skies.

"It was very tough out there, and that's all I can really say. Starting from where I am it is going to be a very difficult race. But as always I will give it my best shot for Tech 3 and Yamaha. The conditions were really tough out there and to be honest we didn't expect so much rain that fell in the last part of the session. I started the session on a rear tyre that was probably too hard but we needed to get out and get some information for Michelin.

By the time I'd put the softer tyre in the rain was unbelievable. That didn't help my situation but I'm not sure I could have improved a lot more if the rain was less and it would have been easy to take too many risks and crash. But it was a bit like Germany a few weeks ago when I had a few issues in the wet race.

I was just trying to find consistent grip that gave me the confidence to push and I was lacking in that area. If it is dry tomorrow like the forecasts say then hopefully we can get some good information in the warm-up and put up a good fight in the race."

"It is has been a very difficult day for me and the Tech 3 Yamaha team, but rest assured I'll wake up tomorrow and I will be going out rain or shine giving it my maximum effort as I always do. I am not going to throw the towel in no matter how difficult it gets. I think it is obvious looking at the lap times where the problems are, but I'm not going to complain about anybody.

It is my job to go out there and do the best job on the package I have got right now and that's what I will do. But if not all of the elements of the package come together then it becomes very difficult. The crash at the first corner there was really nothing I could do. I wasn't trying to make up big chunks of time because it was impossible in those conditions and I went down for no reason and that is disappointing.

We'll see what happens tomorrow but the rain will have made the track dirty again and that could make it difficult for the slick tyres if the race is dry. I don't like starting from the back but if I can get a good start, hopefully I can get away with the bunch and have a good race."

1 Casey Stoner Ducati AUS 2'11.657

2 Valentino Rossi Yamaha ITA 2'12.846

3 John Hopkins Kawasaki USA 2'12.959

4 Chris Vermeulen Suzuki AUS 2'13.002

5 Alex De Angelis Honda SMR 2'13.352

6 Anthony West Kawasaki AUS 2'14.064

7 Randy De Puniet Honda FRA 2'14.535

8 Shinya Nakano Honda JPN 2'14.718

9 Loris Capirossi Suzuki ITA 2'14.805

10 Sylvain Guintoli Ducati FRA 2'14.861

11 Marco Melandri Ducati ITA 2'15.880

12 Daniel Pedrosa Honda ESP 2'16.032

13 Toni Elias Ducati ESP 2'16.510

14 Andrea Dovizioso Honda ITA 2'17.632

15 Colin Edwards Yamaha USA 2'20.074

16 James Toseland Yamaha GBR 2'23.303

17 Jorge Lorenzo Yamaha ESP 2'23.701

-Yamaha Racing -