Championship leader Nicky Hayden had a more challenging day as he and his crew worked on the best settings for the evolution RC211V at Donington Park . A technical problem at the start of this afternoon’s one-hour qualifying session reduced the time available to the 24-year-old American and affected his qualifying position. In a close session Hayden, who holds a 42-point lead in the riders’ world championship, set the eleventh-quickest time, just 0.833s behind Pedrosa. As the American has shown so many times this season he’s more than capable of making up places in the race and will come out fighting tomorrow.

Dani Pedrosa  1st  – 1m 27.676s  
I think we did a good job today – so we need to see tomorrow if we can complete the job. The feeling on the bike is good and the race set-up is just about there too so what I need to focus on now is making a great start tomorrow – this is really important. The first few laps will be crucial too of course. I didn’t expect to have such a big gap to the rest today, and to be honest I also didn’t expect to get pole position at Donington, so it’s a nice surprise. We still have to make the final decision on the race tyre, so we’ll see how the weather conditions are and use the time in warm-up tomorrow. I’m pleased because we’ve worked really so far this weekend so I’d like to say thank you to my team.

Nicky Hayden  11th – 1m 28.509s
Well, on the positive side I’m only three tenths from the front row, though obviously I’m not thrilled with how qualifying went today. We had some electrical problems at the start of the session which cost me quite a lot of time but that’s just the way it goes in racing sometimes. We’ll put our heads together and try to get an awesome start tomorrow and recover some places quickly. I’m having a few issues in T4 at the end of the lap, getting quite a lot of wheelying and losing some time there, so we’ll come up with something to work on that. Tomorrow’s the important day and I’m definitely looking forward to the challenge. We had some kids here from the Make A Wish Foundation today and it was really nice to meet those guys too.

Makoto Tanaka - Team Manager
Dani continued where he left off yesterday and was able to push really hard here. His bike package is almost perfect at this moment, though we cannot relax until he hopefully crosses the line in first place. To do this he’ll have to make a good start and be strong in the early laps. I know Dani is thinking like this too. Nicky concentrated on setting up the current chassis today but he couldn’t improve at his usual rate because unluckily in the qualifying session we had an electrical sensor problem and this affected his rhythm. So we have to be very careful at this moment not to make any mistakes. Nicky will need to bring the same strong attitude he has shown this season to make his usual improvement on Sunday and I believe he can improve his speed to fight at the front tomorrow. And I really hope the weather continues to be kind to us.