As could have been predicted by pretty much anyone's cat, Repsol Honda's Casey Stoner has taken pole position for tomorrow's British MotoGP at Silverstone but what no-one could have foreseen, not even Yoda, was that nine-time world champion Valentino Rossi would start from 13th.
Stoner has been fastest all weekend but Gresini Honda's Marco Simoncelli has been pushing him all the way and the pair battled it out for top spot in this afternoon qualifying session.
The Australian eventually won out by less than two tenths of a second, lapping at 2'02.020 compared to Simoncelli's 2'02.208 which was enough to keep the Yamaha pairing of Jorge Lorenzo and Ben Spies in third and fourth repsectively - the American heading row two with a 2'02.677.
As all the scrapping was going on at the top, Rossi couldn't life himself from the head of the last row and is a massive 3.7s off Stoner's pace with apparently no answer to questions posed over rear-end stability in free practice.
The second Repsol bike of Andrea Dovizioso is in fifth while Karel Abraham(yes, really) is the leading Ducati rider in sixth with Nicky Hayden seventh and Colin Edwards, who has a broken collarbone, in eighth. Alvaro Bautista and Randy De Puniet round out the top ten. Cal Crutchlow fell in the opening minutes and broke his collarbone (click here).
