Jorge Lorenzo seals stunning pole in Motegi for Yamaha's home race

Jorge Lorenzo was on superb form at Motegi today, taking an impressive pole position on his first visit to Japan as a Yamaha rider. The 21-year-old will head the field for his Factory's home race tomorrow whilst his Fiat Yamaha team-mate Valentino Rossi, who will be bidding to seal his eighth World Championship crown, will start from fourth.

Lorenzo struggled in the dry yesterday afternoon but some overnight set-up changes to his M1 reaped rich rewards today and the Spaniard was in very different shape from this morning, finishing the early session in second. This afternoon saw him sustain an even higher level of performance, improving with three out of four of his Michelin qualifying tyres and holding off Casey Stoner, Nicky Hayden and Rossi to hang on to pole position.

With his challengers already back in the pits he had pole in the bag for his final run but was nonetheless able to improve once again, setting a best lap of 1'45.543 and bettering the previous pole record by 0.181 seconds.

Lorenzo began his MotoGP career this season with three straight poles, culminating in a win from the third one in Portugal. He has started from third at the last two races and finished in the same position for both, meaning he has been on the podium each time he has started on the front row this season. He will be looking to keep this record intact when the lights go out at 1400 local time tomorrow.

"I'm so happy for this pole position because this is how I started my season and it shows that we are returning to how we were. It's the first pole since Portugal, when I won, and we have had a hard time since then until the last two podiums so this is a great satisfaction for me. I was able to ride so fast all day today, a big improvement from yesterday, and my Michelin tyres worked so well all day so thank you to them.

My team have done a great job to set the bike up and this is a fantastic qualifying for us. It's not the race so now we have to wait for tomorrow, but we're starting in the best place so I am looking forward to having a great race."

"This morning's session gave us a lot of confidence for this afternoon's qualifying. Today, with more temperature in the ground and an improved set-up, we were able to be very fast and consistent. Many thanks to Michelin for very good qualifying tyres; they worked incredibly well today and gave Jorge the chance to fly. It was very exciting for the team to watch him riding like this. We are confident that tomorrow we will have the chance to fight for podium."

After the changeable weather of yesterday, today was bright and sunny and Rossi was in good shape this morning and finished the session third. This afternoon he signalled his intentions with twenty minutes to go by going to the top of the time sheets with his first Bridgestone qualifying tyre, although he was displaced soon after by Stoner, who was then knocked off by Lorenzo in turn.

Despite improving with his next two tyres Rossi was unable to make a dent in his team-mate's time and he than ran into traffic on his last run, meaning he was unable to improve a final time and was edged off the front row by Nicky Hayden at the end.

Finishing on the podium will be enough for the Italian to secure his eighth world championship tomorrow, although he can also take the title from further down the order depending on where Casey Stoner finishes. Tomorrow's 24-lap race gets underway at 1400 local time.

"Honestly I'm a bit disappointed because the front row was our target today, but anyway fourth isn't too bad! Unfortunately we spent a bit too much time with the race tyres and started our qualifying sequence a few minutes late, this meant that I was maybe one or two minutes late going out with my last tyre and I got a bit caught up with traffic when de Angelis fell.

Anyway, our race pace is quite good so I am confident that we can be in the fight, although we will have to get a good start.. We have one or two small problems that we need to work on so we will use the warm-up to check a few things and I think we can improve a little bit more. I am not thinking about the championship right now, I will just aim for the podium and see what happens."

"I think our starting position could have been a little bit better, as there was some traffic on the last lap which didn't allow Valentino to improve on his final run. For tomorrow the race pace is good and we're definitely in the mix but there are three or four riders with a good pace so it will definitely be a hard fight tomorrow. Our target will be to stay in the fight and finish on the podium. Congratulations to Jorge and his team for making a return to pole."

Edwards claimed his best qualifying position since his home race in Laguna Seca as he finished an exciting session with the seventh quickest time. Having spent most of the day trying to improve rear traction on race tyres, Edwards was immediately in the groove on his first Michelin qualifying tyre.

He jumped to the top of the timesheets with a lap of 1.47.082 with 23 minutes remaining and showed impressive progress throughout. By the end he was only 0.046s off claiming a superb second row start with a best time of 1.46.496.

Toseland will start from 10th position as the British rider worked tirelessly on fine-tuning his race set-up to suit harder compound tyres, with conditions much hotter than yesterday's mixed weather. Toseland steadily improved his pace and he's confident he can fight his way into contention for a top six finish in Yamaha's home race.

"I felt like I threw everything at it today but I couldn't get close to Jorge's time. That was pretty impressive and he did an awesome job. The weird thing is that our qualifier doesn't usually spin at all but for some reason today that's all mine did. Michelin have had a great qualifier all year but today it felt more like a soft race tyre, which is very strange and I don't know if it is down to the tyre or the set-up.

Looking at Jorge and how he seemed to make it work, I guess it was our set-up. On race tyres it is the same. Everything I have got it is spinning but there is no variation. I've got three tyres I could race and they all feel the same. Normally that would tell you there is a set-up issue. We had spinning problems yesterday and we played around with rear springs and some other suggestions we thought might work, but none of it really seemed to make any difference.

We just haven't found anything yet. Looking at my race pace, I don't really have a low 47 in my package at the moment and it looks like that's what we are going to need. It would have been good to be on the second row because history has shown that the first corner here can be pretty tough.

It is also not the easiest place to overtake on. There are a lot of hard braking zones but you've got lots of momentum going into the corner, so you've got to be really confident to dive underneath somebody. This is a big race for Yamaha tomorrow and hopefully I can play a big part in it."

"I paid for my lack of time and experience on this track really. To be in the top ten is not too bad but when you believe you can do a lot better it is frustrating. With four qualifiers you need half the session to use them and that just leaves you ten to fifteen laps on race tyres to find a good set-up. We got the bike a bit better and got into the 48s but we really need to be doing high 47s to be challenging for the top six.

I'm pretty happy with my progress but with that rain session yesterday it has held me back a little bit. We made a step forward with the set-up yesterday but there is more we need to do. The temperature was a lot hotter today and the softer tyre that was looking good,we can't use. Now it is warmer we need to run the harder tyre and we need a lot more weight on the rear to make it work.

The setting that we had was fine for the softer tyre but with the harder one it wasn't putting enough load on the rear tyre. On the qualifiers I got into the 46s and I'm only three-tenths off Colin and he has been here many times on the same bike. I could have done with being on that third row so it will be a bit difficult but we'll try and keep out of trouble early on. You need a good start because there is not much distance between the start and the first corner.

There is a top six finish out there if we can improve the setting and I'll be giving it my all as usual with this being such an important race for everybody at Yamaha."

1 Jorge Lorenzo Yamaha ESP 1'45.543

2 Casey Stoner Ducati AUS 1'45.831

3 Nicky Hayden Honda USA 1'45.971

4 Valentino Rossi Yamaha ITA 1'46.060

5 Daniel Pedrosa Honda ESP 1'46.303

6 Loris Capirossi Suzuki ITA 1'46.450

7 Colin Edwards Yamaha USA 1'46.496

8 Randy De Puniet Honda FRA 1'46.554

9 Shinya Nakano Honda JPN 1'46.616

10 James Toseland Yamaha GBR 1'46.863

11 John Hopkins Kawasaki USA 1'46.888

12 Chris Vermeulen Suzuki AUS 1'46.904

13 Andrea Dovizioso Honda ITA 1'46.907

14 Toni Elias Ducati ESP 1'46.958

15 Sylvain Guintoli Ducati FRA 1'47.400