Tec3 Yamaha's James Toseland was under pressure on his last qualifying tyre at Valencia's MotoGP round after Marco Melandri baulked him on a potential front row lap.
The Yorkshireman, who qualified on row two, same across Marlboro Ducati's Melandri on the last corner of his third lap on a qualifying tyre but couldn't get past the Italian and had to abort.
“I’m really happy to be on the second row at the end because I had to pull a lap out under pressure after Melandri had baulked me at the last corner on my third qualifier," said the 28-year-old.
"I wasn’t too worried because I thought he was going to start a fast lap, but as we came out of the final corner he didn’t really do anything. That was a bit disappointing but I had to deliver on my last qualifier. When you know it is the last tyre you know you can’t afford to make a mistake, and I did the first split nowhere near as good as I did on the previous tyre when I came across Melandri.
"The hardest part of this track is the first part because of the speed of the first corner and the preciseness of the second corner. Once you have got that section to the fourth corner done, the circuit flows a bit more, but I wasn’t aggressive enough in the early part.
"I needed to do a 32 and luckily I managed it. I just hope the warm-up is dry because we need to do some work on the dry set-up, but at least I’ve qualified well and hopefully I can get away with them and see how much grip there is.
"Any less than the second row and it is very difficult because it so hard to pass at this track. I really want to end the season on a high for the team. I’ve had flashes of brilliance and some disappointing results in my rookie season, so hopefully I’ve got one more flash in me tomorrow. It would be good to end on a high and go into the winter positive for 2009."
