Zoom Dani Pedrosa

Repsol Honda rider Dani Pedrosa is going well at Mugello, the Spaniard was fastest in this morning's free practice session and a close second in this afternoon's qualifying outing, just 0.167 seconds off pole position.

Team-mate Nicky Hayden also went well today with sixth best time in qualifying, only half a second off pole.

And Italian GP wild card Tadayuki Okada, who is giving Honda's pneumatic-valve-spring engine its MotoGP debut, qualified a respectable 15th for his first GP in almost eight years.

After yesterday's rain-lashed first day of practice there was further rainfall this morning, so qualifying was the first fully dry session of the weekend. Race tyre selection will thus be a more than usually complicated affair, with Repsol Honda engineers working closely with Michelin technicians to choose the best tyres for tomorrow's race.

Despite the lack of dry-track time the pace was red hot, with pole position eight tenths faster than the previous best Mugello pole, set by a 990cc MotoGP bike in 2006.

Tomorrow's race will be Okada's second ‘sprint' event (as opposed to endurance events) since he stopped full-time racing at the end of 2001. The former GP winner's only other ‘sprint' race since then was an All-Japan championship race at Tsukuba on May 11, in which he finished tenth.

Dani Pedrosa
“Conditions weren't so good this morning, the track was dirty after all the rain, so it wasn't easy to work on set-up. This afternoon the track was completely dry and better, so we were more focused in our work. We still need to improve, so the warm-up session will be very important. We still haven't decided which tyres to run, and this choice will crucial because the race is long and there are a lot corners that require an aggressive riding style, so we need to look for a good compromise. Starting from the front row is very important here, so I'm happy to be there. Tomorrow it will be a tough race with many competitive riders.”

Nicky Hayden
“We've basically only had one completely dry session all weekend – so we've tried out a lot of tyres: rains, intermediates and qualifiers and just a couple of race tyres. So that's certainly a big issue for tomorrow, we don't know a lot about what race tyres to run, so we'll definitely let Michelin help us a little there. We made a bit of progress this afternoon and ended up on the second row. I'm not going to fool myself though, it's certainly going to be a hard one tomorrow, some guys going really quick. It'd be nice to improve in warm-up, we've got some work to do to try and get closer to the front. Then we'll just try to get a start and go for it.”