Daniel Pedrosa took his third pole position of the season and the sixteenth of his career this afternoon in the final qualifying session for the Catalunya GP.

The double World Champion regained control after encountering several problems yesterday, improving his feeling for the bike in the afternoon and setting the circuit’s best ever pole registry during an intense session. Dani will aim for his fourth victory of the season and his third in a row tomorrow, after previous wins at Jerez, Le Mans and Mugello.

Hiroshi Aoyama was also in satisfied mood at the end of the session after equalling his best grid position of fifth place at Shanghai, when he followed up with a podium finish in the race. The Japanese rider will hope for a similar result tomorrow, with several of his family members watching on. 

DANI PEDROSA (1^st, 1’46”238): “We’ve improved quite a lot from yesterday to today and that has been reflected in both my feeling with the bike and my lap times, although it will be a very long and hot race so we’ll have to see how the tyres behave. Having said that, I think we’re pretty clear about which tyre we’re going to use. We had problems yesterday and we spent a lot of time today making changes to the bike so I didn’t have much time to go for a fast lap at the end of the session. We managed it though and my hope now is to get a good start in the race and fight for the best possible result.”

HIROSHI AOYAMA (5^th, 1’47”082): “My feeling on the bike has improved a lot with respect to Mugello. I think we had a good day of qualifying today and I hope to be fighting for the podium tomorrow. For that to happen I have to be very concentrated at the start and over the opening few laps because I lost touch with the lead group at Mugello and it was difficult to make up ground. I can’t afford for the same thing to happen again.”

LAP TIMES 

1. Dani Pedrosa (Esp/Honda)      1’46”238

2. Jorge Lorenzo (Esp/Honda)        + 0”379

3. Sebastián Porto (Arg/Aprilia)      + 0”468

4. Randy De Puniet (Fra/Aprilia)     + 0”587

5. Hiroshi Aoyama (Jap/Honda)+ 0”844

6. Alex De Angelis (RSM/Aprilia)     + 0”852

7. Héctor Barberá (Esp/Honda)      + 1”216

8. Casey Stoner (Aus/Aprilia)        + 1”248

9. Andrea Dovizioso (Ita/Honda)    + 1”257

10. Simone Corsi (Ita/Aprilia)         + 1”412