Gibernau takes Valencia pole, Rossi nightmare.

Sete Gibernau will start from pole position for Sunday's Valencia Grand Prix, the 17th and final round of the 2005 MotoGP World Championship season - a result which also sealed the BMW Best Qualifier Award for the Spaniard - while world champion Valentino Rossi will line-up just 15th on the grid after a poor session culminated in a high-speed accident.

Day one had seen Turkish Grand Prix winner Marco Melandri pick up where he left off at Istanbul, the young Italian leading the 21-rider field after the opening two free practice sessions - but with Ducati Marlboro's Carlos Checa, and his own team-mate Gibernau, both within just 0.059secs of the #33.

But Saturday morning's third and final free practice session didn't go nearly as well for Marco, who was one of seven riders that failed to improve on their Friday best and was left down in sixth, 1.1secs from fastest man Gibernau, as a result.

Gibernau led the way after setting a new circuit record of 1min 32.453secs on the 25th of his 27 morning laps, while separating the two Movistar Honda riders by the end of the hour were Checa (+0.273secs), Rossi (+0.635secs), Hayden (+0.679secs) and Edwards (+1.082secs). But was that a true representation of form or had some riders tried a qualifying tyre?

Into this afternoon's qualifying hour and lap times would first break the 1min 33secs barrier when Checa - who had led nearly all of the opening 30-minutes - suddenly jumped 0.7secs clear of the field just after the halfway mark - his lap time just a few hundredths from Gibernau's morning record.

Whether Checa had used an early qualifier or not, the time went unchallenged until he himself returned ten-minutes later for his next series of laps - and promptly trimmed a further 0.057secs off his previous best to officially claim the fastest lap of the weekend and a new Valencia record.

But that advantage would evaporate when Melandri toppled the factory Ducati rider by just 0.091secs with 15-minutes to go - while others were also soon closing back in on the top two, led by Gibernau, Hayden, Biaggi and Toni Elias.

One name missing from that list was world champion Rossi, who was then down in 13th - and it would turn out to an unlucky 13th at that, as the Italian superstar suffered his biggest fall of the season when he lost the front and fell from his 'retro' liveried Yamaha through the fast left-right chicane during the middle of the lap - and slid straight off into the deep Valencia gravel.

The #46 was shaken, but fortunately largely unharmed, and was soon back in the Factory Yamaha pits to be cleaned up and try a last gasp improvement on his spare machine.

But while all attention was on Rossi and the retrieval of his smashed M1, Hayden suddenly popped onto pole by just four hundredths of a second - and would still be at the head of the field as the final five-minutes began.

A very sore Capirossi looked like he might be the first to threaten Nicky, but ran wide in the final turn and crossed the line in fifth place - by which time Rossi was back out on track.

However, while Rossi was trying to break into the top ten - or even top 15 after having slipped back further - Gibernau was looking to wrap up his fifth pole of the season, which the Catalan duly did with the first ever 1min 31secs Valencia lap.

Sete only needed to lap within 1.9secs of Rossi to seal the 2005 BMW Best Qualifier Award - and the prize of a M5 sports car - for his peerless qualifying performances this season, meaning that the Catalan has at least retrieved something from a winless season so far. However, he'd surely sacrifice the prize for a home victory tomorrow...

Meanwhile, Melandri would demote Hayden from second for a Movistar one-two, giving the #33 a further pre-race advantage in their duel for second place in the 2005 championship. Rossi took the chequered flag a few seconds later to complete his final qualifying lap of the season - but the clearly out-of-sync Italian amazingly still couldn't improve on 15th position.

That result - while uncomfortable for the Yamaha star and his legions of fans - effectively guarantees an action packed season-finale as The Doctor fights to equal Mick Doohan's record of 12 wins in a season from the fifth row of the grid, on a notoriously hard to pass circuit.

At the opposite end of the field, Hayden hung on to complete the all-Honda front row, with Checa heading row two for Ducati alongside Biaggi and the lead Yamaha of Edwards. Checa's injured team-mate Capirossi will be joined on row three by Barros and Nakano, while Tamada completed the top ten ahead of the lead Suzuki of John Hopkins.

Further back, Suzuki wild-card Nobuatsu Aoki claimed 14th, just in front of Rossi, while BSB runner-up Ryuichi Kiyonari will start one place behind the seven times world champion on his Camel Honda debut.

Kurtis Roberts, qualified the 2004 Proton KR V5 20th on his MotoGP return, between the WCM's of James Ellison and Franco Battaini.

Full times to follow...

Qualifying:

1. Gibernau
2. Melandri
3. Hayden
4. Checa
5. Biaggi
6. Edwards
7. Capirossi
8. Barros
9. Nakano
10. Tamada
11. Hopkins
12. Hofmann
13. Elias
14. Aoki
15. Rossi
16. Kiyonari
17. Xaus
18. Rolfo
19. Ellison
20. Roberts
21. Battaini