2011 Mugello MotoGP Qualifying Practice: Early Fast Lap Takes Pole In Rain-Stricken Qualifying

Nicky Hayden on 2011 vintage Duc slinging it around the track *faster* than
VR2012 (Vale Rossi on 2012) Duc!!
Yeah, I know, the 2012 800 cc is a work in progress, yada, yada, yada ...
and Vale is still getting acclimated to the Duc ..

Perhaps Nicky is picking up on Casey's comments as mentioned previously (courtesy of David!):

This was not the right direction, in Stoner's opinion, and he picked out Nicky Hayden as an example. "The biggest surprise for me this year has been Nicky," Stoner told reporters. "It seems like he was waiting for Valentino to come along and fix the bike and make it better for him to ride," Stoner explained, "but if Nicky just concentrated and rode like he did last year, he'd be having much better results than what he's had so far."

The Ducati, fiery Redhead that she is, has her own demands as to how she is to be riden !!

If it stays dry tomorrow the Ducatistas wont have anything to cheer about. Even if Sic kicks himself + some poor lad riding in the crashing line out of the competition there are still at least 1 or 2 Hondas and 3 or 4 Yamahas in front that are out of reach.

But if it rains ..., all bets are of. For some reasons the Duke works in the rain (except of course in Strugglestone). Just think about an all Duke podium!!

If Ben can shadow the Hondas until the last third of the race I think he has a good chance for another win.

I hope Marco finally makes the podium this week (just behind Ben of course).

... are not a new phenomenon - just that no one bothered to pay attention to Stoner's comments in the past. This is what our local rag reported after Aragon last year: "With the Hungarian round scrubbed due to the new circuit not being built, round 13 of the championship was held at Motorland Aragon in Spain. But that was not an unlucky number for Ducati. Finally the team realised that fiddling around with chassis stiffness ratios and small chassis adjustments was not the way to go. Instead, they made the changes one would have expected from a professional team much, much sooner. Instead of tinkering at the edges, they took drastic steps, and Stoner promptly put the Ducati on pole and ran away with the race."
Are any of the Ducati riders at Mugello using that winning set-up?

Here's some food for thought...I went over to MotoGP.com and compared the times from 2010 and 2011 @ Mugello. Last year for Ducati, Stoner's best lap was a 1:49.432 in QP. This year, Rossi's best time was 1:49.459 in the morning warm up. As for the Hondas, last year Pedrosa (Pole sitter and race winner) posted a 148.819 in QP while this year, Stoner (also pole sitter) posted a 14.034 in QP.

Now for an "apples-to-apples" comparison: last year for Ducati, a healthy Nicky Hayden qualified 4th on the grid with a 1:49.546. This year, a still-healthy Nicky Hayden qualified 9th on the grid with a 1:49.509. It seems to me that what we are seeing this year is that Honda has made gains over the past 12 months while Ducati has only managed to stay the same, in spite of significant activity in terms of factory development.