Casey Stoner will start on pole for the seventh consecutive race at the San Marino Grand Prix on Sunday as he looks to bridge the gap to championship leader Valentino Rossi.
Stoner, the reigning Moto GP champion, completed his quickest lap with just minutes of the qualifying session remaining, clocking a time of one minute 33.378 seconds.
The Australian's time was over a half a second quicker than Rossi, who will start second on the grid ahead of his Fiat Yamaha team-mate Jorge Lorenzo.
Stoner currently trails Rossi by 50 points in the championship and his hopes of eating into that margin looked to have been diminished during Friday's practice session when he fractured his hand.
The Marlboro Ducati rider arrived at the Misano track on Saturday with his hand bandaged, but that did not prevent him putting on another dominant qualifying display.
"The hand wasn't too much of a problem today although I didn't want to risk working it too hard," Stoner said.
"There is a bit of bone floating around in there and when my wrist gets into a certain position in some of the corners the nerves get trapped and I get a shooting pain up my arm."
"I can deal with that though and we have an important job to do this weekend."
Stoner's efforts have again forced Rossi to content himself second, but the Italian remains optimistic having won the previous two races from the same position.
"I'm happy about our work because we did a good job with the qualifying tyres this afternoon and we were able to improve with each one, which is important," Rossi said.
"In the end we couldn't match Casey's time but anyway second on the grid is good for the race."
"Our race set-up is still not perfect and there are some corners where we need to be faster still, so we have to work to try to improve that tonight."
Randy de Puniet heads the second row of the grid on his LCR Honda ahead of Toni Elias (Alice Ducati) and Repsol Honda's Dani Pedrosa.
Chris Vermeulen (Rizla Suzuki) and Honda's Shinya Nakano are next up, while the Tech 3 Yamahas complete the top 10, Britain's James Toseland edging out American team-mate Colin Edwards.
San Marino GP third practice session
1 Casey Stoner 1:34.365
2 Valentino Rossi 1:35.076
3 Jorge Lorenzo 1:35.160
4 Chris Vermeulen 1:35.362
5 Colin Edwards 1:35.425
6 Dani Pedrosa 1:35.520
7 Loris Capirossi 1:35.534
8 Shinya Nakano 1:35.549
9 Randy De Puniet 1:35.628
10 Alex De Angelis 1:35.739
Stoner, the reigning Moto GP champion, completed his quickest lap with just minutes of the qualifying session remaining, clocking a time of one minute 33.378 seconds.
The Australian's time was over a half a second quicker than Rossi, who will start second on the grid ahead of his Fiat Yamaha team-mate Jorge Lorenzo.
Stoner currently trails Rossi by 50 points in the championship and his hopes of eating into that margin looked to have been diminished during Friday's practice session when he fractured his hand.
The Marlboro Ducati rider arrived at the Misano track on Saturday with his hand bandaged, but that did not prevent him putting on another dominant qualifying display.
"The hand wasn't too much of a problem today although I didn't want to risk working it too hard," Stoner said.
"There is a bit of bone floating around in there and when my wrist gets into a certain position in some of the corners the nerves get trapped and I get a shooting pain up my arm."
"I can deal with that though and we have an important job to do this weekend."
Stoner's efforts have again forced Rossi to content himself second, but the Italian remains optimistic having won the previous two races from the same position.
"I'm happy about our work because we did a good job with the qualifying tyres this afternoon and we were able to improve with each one, which is important," Rossi said.
"In the end we couldn't match Casey's time but anyway second on the grid is good for the race."
"Our race set-up is still not perfect and there are some corners where we need to be faster still, so we have to work to try to improve that tonight."
Randy de Puniet heads the second row of the grid on his LCR Honda ahead of Toni Elias (Alice Ducati) and Repsol Honda's Dani Pedrosa.
Chris Vermeulen (Rizla Suzuki) and Honda's Shinya Nakano are next up, while the Tech 3 Yamahas complete the top 10, Britain's James Toseland edging out American team-mate Colin Edwards.
San Marino GP third practice session
1 Casey Stoner 1:34.365
2 Valentino Rossi 1:35.076
3 Jorge Lorenzo 1:35.160
4 Chris Vermeulen 1:35.362
5 Colin Edwards 1:35.425
6 Dani Pedrosa 1:35.520
7 Loris Capirossi 1:35.534
8 Shinya Nakano 1:35.549
9 Randy De Puniet 1:35.628
10 Alex De Angelis 1:35.739
