Stoner secures eighth pole of the season

Today in San Marino, Casey Stoner took his 30th MotoGP career pole position and 8th of the 2011 season, and with it he broke his own record set here in 2008 by two tenths of a second.

It was a very hot qualifying session with air temperatures reaching 29 degrees and a track temperature of 39 degrees. Stoner spent the early part of the session working on set up for the hard tire, when he switched to the soft tire he was able to record the fastest lap seen at Misano with a 1'33.138 on lap 18.

CASEY STONER – 1st 1'33.138

"It's been a pretty good weekend for us here, steadily improving the bike each session. We struggled a little with the hard tire this afternoon, trying to find the correct balance but then we made an improvement and got the bike feeling better. Then when we put the soft tires on, we got a great lap in but the bike wasn't working too well in the front, which is something we need to improve for tomorrow. It will be a tough race, Dani and Jorge are both running very well so I'll try to get a good start but there are a few more overtaking opportunities here at Misano, it's not a track with only one line. The weekend on a whole is going well, tomorrow we'll have to decide on tires depending on what the weather is doing, hopefully it will cool down a little which would be nice!".

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