Repsol Honda's Dani Pedrosa has taken pole position for tomorrow's Misano MotoGP round, just edging out title rival Jorge Lorenzo by two one-hundredths of a second while Britain's Cal Crutchlow slipped back to third place for his fifth front-row start on the Monster Yamaha.
But Irishman Jonathan Rea, who hadn't turned in a dry-weather lap at the Italian track before the session started, will sit alongside MotoGP winner Andrea Dovizioso and Ben Spies on the third row after qualifying just 1.5s off the pace of his factory Honda team-mate.
Rea had done two and a half day's testing on Casey Stoner's RC213V before he came to Misano but poor track conditions meant all three free practice session were of no use to him, so he had only qualifying to get used to the bike and he did, hovering around the top ten for the hour.
Fellow HRC-backed rider Stefan Bradl was on pole with eight minutes left to go but slipped down to fourth as first Crutchlow went to the top of the tree, then Pedrosa and Lorenzo exchanged times to settle the pole time with Red Bull rider nicking it with his last effort.
Alvaro Bautista, who could well be battling with Rea for the final satellite Honda, took fifth place and is only four-tenths off the pace while it is better news for Valentino Rossi who takes the last spot on row two and is three-quarters of a second in arrears.
Nicky Hayden, who is riding with a damaged hand, heads row four with Karel Abraham next to him and leading CRT rider Randy De Puniet in 12th place. James Ellison is 3.3s off the pace in 16th but only just over a second behind the Frenchman while Colin Edwards looked fairly fed up with his 20th place.
