World championship leader Jorge Lorenzo will start on pole for today’s Czech MotoGP after finishing fastest in qualifying yesterday.

The Yamaha rider clocked 1min 55.799 seconds for his fourth pole of the season, setting a new circuit record and leaving Yamaha’s Cal Crutchlow 0.196 seconds behind in second place.

Spain’s Dani Pedrosa, trailing Lorenzo by 18 points, came in third 0.528 seconds behind after dominating all three free practices.

Lorenzo’s Yamaha team-mate Ben Spies finished fourth in qualifying, ahead of two Italians – Andrea Dovizioso (Yamaha) and Ducati’s Valentino Rossi.

“We started in a very good way in the first practice but then we couldn’t improve the bike, we tried everything and it was impossible,” said Lorenzo.

“So we came back to last year’s setting here, the first time I tried the 1,000 (cc), and from the beginning I felt much better,” added the Spaniard who won in Brno in 2010 on his way to his world champion-ship victory.

Pedrosa is all that is left of the Repsol Honda Team after Casey Stoner, last year’s winner from Brno who is third in the overall standings, returned to Australia to undergo surgery on his broken ankle before the Brno event.

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