NOYES HAS MOTO2 POLE

AMERICAN Kenny Noyes, who was a front-runner for a big part of the Moto2 race at Jerez, rode a storming qualifying session to take pole position for Sunday’s race, posting a best lap of 1m 39.234s to put his Promoharris machine team at the head of the grid.

That was 0.432 seconds under Marco Simoncelli's 250GP lap record for the circuit, set in 2008, but 0.964 of a second slower than Alvaro Bautista's 250GP class pole record time

Noyes is the first American to take pole in the intermediate GP class since John Kocinski at the Australian 250cc GP in 1990.

As was the case in the earlier practice session, there was little separating a large number of riders, with the top 27 all within a second of one another.

Second fastest, at just 0.031s behind Noyes, was Yuki Takahashi who will ensure that his Tech3 team start their home race from an encouraging spot. Alex Debón joins them on the front row, as will Frenchman Jules Cluzel.

Fonsi Nieto and Sergio Gadea maintained their consistency from practice to take the fifth and sixth fastest times respectively, whilst Toni Elías recovered from an early crash to record the seventh quickest lap. Simone Corsi will complete the second row.

The lap record for the now defunct 250cc Grand Prix class at Le Mans was set in 2008 by Marco Simoncelli on a rotary disc valve two-stroke V-twin Gilera at 1m 39.666s - an average of 151.164 km/h. The pole position record in 250GP was set in 2009 by Alaro Bautista at 1m 38.270s, 153.312 km/h.

For the complete list of qualifying Moto2 riders for the Monster Energy Grand Prix de France, click on: http://resources.motogp.com/files/results/xx/2010/FRA/Moto2/QP/Classification.pdf?v1_9526d4be