Repsol Honda's Dani Pedrosa has taken his first pole position of the 2011 MotoGP season this afternoon at Brno, fending off late charges from reigning world champion Jorge Lorenzo and team-mate Casey Stoner with a final lap of 1'56.591.
The diminutive Spaniard picked up where he left off in the dry yesterday but couldn't match the 1'56.328 he set in the first session yesterday but his time today was enough to keep the other two aliens behind him but still on the front row.
Rossi, meanwhile, found one fast lap to take sixth place just behind Gresini Honda's Marco Simoncelli and Ben Spies in fourth place. The big-haired Italian is three-quarters of a second off Pedrosa's pace and two tenths slower than Spies, who is suffering with a pinched nerve in his neck that is causing numbness in his left arm.
The third Repsol bike of Andrea Dovizioso is languishing down in seventh place just ahead of Colin Edwards who was as high as fourth fastest on the half hour. Nicky Hayden is the second fastest Ducati in ninth with Hiro Aoyama rounding out the top ten.
Monster Yamaha's Cal Crutchlow got up from a late crash but had to settle for his 1'57.797 which was good enough for eleventh place while Toni Elias put in a surprising lap of 1'58.245 which placed him in 12th.
Click here for Stoner's FP3 crash pictures by Bonnie Lane
