Valentino Rossi never did it. Giacomo Agostini never did it. Neither did Eddie Lawson, Mick Doohan, or Mike Hailwood. Casey Stoner is the only MotoGP rider in history to claim 10 pole positions in a season, and he accomplished that feat today with a record breaking time at Motegi.
The Repsol Honda rider set a 1'45.267 around the Japanese circuit, beating Jorge Lorenzo's 2008 record by two tenths of a second. Lorenzo also finished below his 2008 time (by .02 seconds) to take second on the front row. Andrea Dovizioso will complete the first row of the grid.
"Everything has gone very well so far this weekend, we've been fastest in all but one session so it's been fantastic," Stoner said. "We tried a few different settings this afternoon and didn't really improve so we'll probably go back to this morning's setting for tomorrow... Jorge has been riding fantastic, as has Dovi and Dani, but there is no doubt that the Honda suits this track, I've been looking forward to riding it here for a while now and I'm not disappointed! Tomorrow will be a tough race, but the team is working hard and we'll do our best."
Pedrosa will start row two ahead of Ben Spies and Marco Simoncelli, while Valentino Rossi will start from the front of the third row.
Casey Stoner currently has 44 points on Jorge Lorenzo with four more races left in the 2011 MotoGP season.
