Gresini Honda's Marco Simoncelli has taken his second MotoGP pole position of the season at Assen this afternoon while Valentino Rossi's risky move to the Ducati GP11.1 is not yet paying off as the Italian struggled to 11th place, some 1.8s off the pace.
Simoncelli was pushed all the way by the Factory Yamaha of Ben Spies with the Texan only 0.009s slower than the Honda man's 1'34.718 while Casey Stoner put in a last ditch effort to bring himself to within a quarter of a second in third place.
The second Yamaha of Jorge Lorenzo is at the head of row two but a litte less than half a second off the pace while Andrea Dovizioso just edged out Cal Crutchlow, who is riding with a broken collarbone, for fifth place.
The Monster Yamaha rookie set third-fastest time with his final lap but ws bumped down to the second row in the final couple of minutes. Fellow rookie Karel Abraham, on the satellite Pacemaker Ducati, is seventh and he has Colin Edwards and Nicky Hayden for company on row three. Randy De Puniet pushed Rossi into 11th place with his last lap.
The Doctor set his fastest time of 1'36.354 on his 25th of 27 laps. He had been second to last until some tweaks saw Rossi go out for a final run. He went to 12th and then tenth before being demoted again. Currently, he is only 0.016s of a second ahead of Hiro Aoyama, who has never ridden around Assen on a four-stroke, let alone an HRC one. However, Rossi still has Jeremy Burgess' morning warm-up magic bullet to rely on…
