Championship leader Casey Stoner took his forth consecutive pole position at Misano - once again spoiled things for Valentino Rossi, as he stole pole position from Italian in fantastic lap in last seconds of qualifying. With a time of 1:33.918, he was the rider under 1.34 mark. Nicky Hayden continues his good form in the last half of this season, finding himself on the front row. Rounding out the 2nd row are de Puniet, Hopkins and Pedrosa.

Casey Stoner, Marlboro Ducati
We haven't turned all my poles so far this year into wins. I'd like to think we could do that tomorrow but I think it's going to be a very hard race - nobody's really got the ideal setting because we've all had only a small amount of time and experience on this track. Also, yesterday's rain forced the cancellation of the afternoon session, with an extra hour added on to this morning's session, so everything's been a bit messed up. Anyway, we are pretty happy with the settings we have at the moment - we were fast this morning when we did race distance on our softest compound race tyres and everything is looking pretty good for the race. But we'll just have to wait and see, because I'm not really sure about everyone else's situation."

Valentino Rossi - Fiat Yamaha
The atmosphere today was unbelievable, there are so many fans and so much yellow around the circuit; it was really important for me to make a good result like this. I rode at the maximum today and I'm very happy with the result. It's been a long time without a front-row start, since Donington, and it's a big relief to be back here again. I like this track a lot so far, it's technical and has some really good parts, it's not too tight and it's possible to have fun. There are some bumps but it's not disastrous and it seems to suit our bike well. Our Michelin tyres are working well here and I can ride the bike how I want to again. It was also very good with the qualifying tyre. Casey is very fast once again and we know that it's going to be very hard tomorrow, but starting from the front is going to make things much easier and now I am looking forward to a fun race.

Nicky Hayden, Repsol Honda
Qualifying was always going to be a bit of an unknown, there's a couple of tyres I haven't even tried yet. I quite like the track, I got up to speed pretty quickly this morning, but when it came time to start doing 1:35s, 1:34s, I haven't been able to make that next step. We struggled a bit in the afternoon, even on the first qualifier, and on the last one I knew that I had to reach down and take a few chances and try to pull something out. I had a lot of chatter but the Michelin qualifying tyre was really good. I know those guys are working hard and it hasn't been easy on them, so I appreciate them making the effort. That's encouraging. We squeezed on the front row, which is obviously going to be really important around here, and hopefully my guys can tweak on it tonight and we can get a little bit better. There are parts of the track where I'm not too good, and a few parts where I'm okay. I've got a lot of faith in my boys and hopefully we can come up with something and try to be in the fight tomorrow, because I'm sure it's going to be a good show. The atmosphere's unbelievable and I need to be a part of it, so we'll see what's up tomorrow.

Misano Qualifying Results: