Magic McWilliams!

Ulsterman Jeremy McWilliams dominated the final qualifying at Phillip Island - becoming the first British rider to take a 500cc pole for thirteen years. He then warned "we can go faster".

The order early on in the session had been; provisional pole sitter Alex Barros still on top with Checa second and local hero Gary McCoy in third. The first major intrusion into that group coming from Valentino Rossi when he moved into second on the Honda development bike, with fifteen minutes gone.

McWilliams shot to the top of the times midway through, then with seventeen minutes to go, he posted a lap an incredible half a second quicker than his existing pole time on the less powerful V Twin Aprilia.

The next lap time would bring another small improvement from the thirty-six year old - and it would be that time that was never beaten.

It was expected that the biggest challenge to McWilliams would come with under ten minutes left when the qualifying tyres came into effect. However, still no one was able to match the speed of McWilliams, Biaggi (on qualifying tyres) even crashing out while trying to come to terms with the #99 riders time - with less than three minutes left, leaving him twelfth on the grid.

McCoy, down in twelfth before his last run, gave it everything he had in front of his home crowd and duly managed sixth on the grid. He was slipstreamed across the finish line by Alex Barros allowing the Brazilian to move ahead of McCoy's Red Bull Yamaha teammate Regis Laconi, into second.

The pacesetting Blu Aprilia MS Team rider said afterwards "The pole came fairly easily to be honest and I feel that we can go faster. But we ran out of time to set-up the Aprilia. In any case, the bike was working very well today and it showed, especially as this is such a fast track."

McWilliams continued, "At the end of the session I concentrated on the tyres because I'm not sure that we have a tyre that can last full race distance yet. I'm obviously very happy with this result and I'd like to thank the whole Aprilia team and everybody that's worked to get us in this position."

The Pole will help McWilliams in his attempts to persuade the Aprilia team to remain in 500cc Grand Prix racing next year.