Gibernau: The clutch broke.

Sete Gibernau saw his hopes of Assen pole position end when the clutch on his Telefonica Honda began slipping on his all important final qualifying lap of the Dutch circuit this afternoon.

"The clutch broke and I couldn't fully open the throttle," said Sete immediately afterwards. "I just tried to do the best I could but at the end of the lap the clutch was (slipping) a lot so I lost a lot of time."

As a result of the problem the world championship leader, who set the pace in the wet yesterday, will start from the outside of the front row behind the Yamahas of Valentino Rossi and Carlos Checa.

Sete was beaten by Rossi in a straight fight last time out at a dry Catalunya, but Rossi's admits Gibernau is the man to beat in the wet - making tomorrow's race especially significant whatever the weather.

"As you can see the Yamaha is working very well here - once again - and it's going to be a hard race tomorrow," admitted Sete. "I think we can improve and hopefully tomorrow we'll have a dry warm-up to work on tyre choice and setup. But the biggest thing now is to solve the clutch problem and I'm sure the team will do that for me."

Should Rossi win tomorrow with Gibernau second it'll mean that the Italian draws level with the #15 at the top of the championship standings.