McCoy leads, crashes and plummets.

Red Bull Yamaha team leader Garry McCoy endured an eventful first qualifying session for the Rio Grand Prix, suffering the highs and lows of bike racing in one single hour.

The Australian proved himself to be among the early pace-setters around the Autodromo Nelson Piquet circuit at Jacarepagua, but ceded the advantage to out-going world champion Kenny Roberts just minutes before falling from his Yamaha. Although he was uninjured, McCoy had to revert to an older spec machine for the remaining twenty minutes of the session and, without ever feeling comfortable, slipped to an unrepresentative place on the third row.

"The crash started with a big slide," the undisputed 'king of sling' reported, "I?d just fitted new tyres and they were gripping pretty well. I thought I was going to be able to save it, but eventually lost it over the bumps.

"Up until then, I was going pretty well and was the fastest out on the track. Unfortunately, the bike was too damaged to repair quickly, and so we had to switch to the other bike, which didn't suit me as well."

His attempts to salvage some ground on the leaders were undone by over-riding the Yamaha, and the Australian could do no better than an eventual twelfth place.

"Right at the end of the session, I went out for two quick laps but sabotaged my efforts by making a series of silly mistakes," McCoy confessed, "Hopefully, things will go better tomorrow."

"Starting off the way we did shows that both Garry and the bike are in good form," commented retiring engineer Hamish Jamieson, "Unfortunately, we didn't manage the half a second progression from there that we needed to put us in a good position on the grid."