Valentino Rossi quick to prove he's best

Valentino Rossi will start from pole position in today's British Moto GP after setting the fastest motorcycle lap of the Donington Park circuit.

The 26-year-old Italian sprinted his Yamaha round the 2.5-mile Leicestershire track in 1min 27.897sec, to become the first rider to lap in less than 1min 28sec. It was a stunning performance from the six-time world champion, but the set-up lessons that he has learnt during two days of practice will be washed away if rain arrives today, as has been forecast.

'The bike is quite good and the feeling isn't bad,' Rossi said after his record-breaking lap. 'We hope to fix some final problems and have a good race, but everybody is hoping for good weather.'
Honda riders Sete Gibernau and Marco Melandri will complete the three-bike front row, with Gibernau lapping more than a quarter of a second slower than Rossi - an ominous gap on this demanding track.

'We need to get our head down and improve,' Gibernau said. 'The first step was to start from the front row and we made it.'

Melandri, 22, who holds second place in the championship table, sounded more upbeat. 'I'm really happy - I found a good rhythm,' he said. 'I made a little mistake on my final lap with my last qualifying tyre, but I hope to learn as much as I can from Sete and Valentino in the race and get on the podium.'

Alex Barros and Nicky Hayden, the only riders to have won a grand prix this year apart from Rossi, finished fourth and fifth respectively. Colin Edwards, a team-mate of Rossi, took the final second-row placing but was probably the most frustrated man on the grid with a time 0.759sec slower than his partner.

'I tested a new tyre for Michelin, but it made the front wheel bounce and I never really recovered after that,' Edwards said. 'We put a normal tyre in, but I lost a little bit of confidence and I never really got up to speed. Now I just need a good start.

Riders will have only this morning's 20-minute warm-up session to decide on tyre choice and final settings if the circuit is wet. And that could throw the race wide open, to any of half a dozen potential winners. It is be a race that Rossi does not need to win because he has a 79-point lead in the championship after only eight rounds and can now canter to his seventh world title.

However, his rivals have plenty to prove. Edwards and Melandri are hungry to record their first wins in Moto GP. Gibernau, the only rider to have pressured Rossi in the previous two seasons, seeks to restore credibility after a wobbly start this term and Hayden wants to demonstrate that his maiden victory in the previous round in the United States was not just a home-track flash. Barros will rely on the wet-weather skills that he used to win in Portugal to try to scoop victory in his 250th grand-prix race.

None of the other teams could dent the Honda-Yamaha domination of the grid. Suzuki were the best of the other manufacturers, with American John Hopkins taking tenth place ahead of Loris Capirossi's Ducati and Shinya Nakano's Kawasaki.

Shane Byrne and James Ellison, the British riders in the field, suffered from a lack of power, with Byrne filling eighteenth place on his Proton KR and Ellison claiming twentieth position on the WCM.