Edwards grabs Le Mans pole

The Fiat Yamaha rider snatched pole from Ducati's Casey Stoner in the dying seconds of the session, with a very quick final sector allowing the American to beat the Australian by almost one tenth of a second.

Carlos Checa completed the first row of the grid, the Cecchinello customer Honda rider setting a time one quarter of a second away from pole.

Edwards's teammate Valentino Rossi never fully threatened to take pole position, and ended up in fourth, 0.016 seconds behind Checa.

Rossi was followed by Rizla Suzuki's John Hopkins in fifth and by Honda Gresini's Toni Elias in sixth rounding up the second row.

The third row will see reigning world champion Nicky Hayden on Repsol Honda in seventh, Kawasaki's Randy de Puniet in eighth, and Marco Melandri on Honda Gresini in ninth.

Repsol Honda's Dani Pedrosa had to settle for tenth place, followed by Yamaha Tech 3's Sylvain Guintoli in 11th and Rizla Suzuki's Chris Vermeulen in 12th.

The top 12 riders were all within one second of Edwards's pole time of 1:33.616.

Loris Capirossi had another disappointing qualifying session and ended up with the 15th spot on the grid, almost 1.3 seconds away from pole.

Kawasaki's Fonsi Nieto, who this weekend is deputising for injured Oliver Jacque, was slowest with a time almost 2.7 seconds away from the top, and almost two seconds away from teammate de Puniet.

Pos  Rider              Bike      Time
 1.  Colin Edwards      Yamaha    1:33.616
 2.  Casey Stoner       Ducati    1:33.710  + 0.094
 3.  Carlos Checa       Honda     1:33.859  + 0.243
 4.  Valentino Rossi    Yamaha    1:33.875  + 0.259
 5.  John Hopkins       Suzuki    1:34.102  + 0.486
 6.  Toni Elias         Honda     1:34.125  + 0.509
 7.  Nicky Hayden       Honda     1:34.247  + 0.631
 8.  Randy de Puniet    Kawasaki  1:34.318  + 0.702
 9.  Marco Melandri     Honda     1:34.360  + 0.744
10.  Daniel Pedrosa     Honda     1:34.412  + 0.796
11.  Sylvain Guintoli   Yamaha    1:34.507  + 0.891
12.  Chris Vermeulen    Suzuki    1:34.574  + 0.958
13.  Alex Barros        Ducati    1:34.817  + 1.201
14.  Shinya Nakano      Honda     1:34.834  + 1.218
15.  Loris Capirossi    Ducati    1:34.903  + 1.287
16.  Makoto Tamada      Yamaha    1:35.346  + 1.730
17.  Alex Hofmann       Ducati    1:35.578  + 1.962
18.  Kenny Roberts Jr.  KR        1:35.681  + 2.065
19.  Fonsi Nieto        Kawasaki  1:36.312  + 2.696