Sepang grid illegal?

The use of free practice times to decide grid positions for Sunday's Malaysian Grand Prix at Sepang, after the cancellation of qualifying due to standing water, appears to directly contradict the FIM road racing rule book...

Rule number 1.15.4 of the Sporting Regulations, under the heading of 'Free Practice', simply states: "Free practice will not be timed for the purpose of qualification or grid positions."

Nevertheless, that is exactly what has happened at Sepang with the combined free practice times being used to set grid positions.

The main beneficiary of the decision is second in the championship Dani Pedrosa, who will start fifth on the grid using the combined free practice times, despite injuring his leg on Friday afternoon and being left 19th and last in Saturday morning's third and final free practice session.

A heavy rain storm then arrived just before the qualifying hour and, despite a two-hour delay in which the rain cleared, the session was eventually cancelled due to deep standing water in some parts of the track.

Among those unhappy with the use of free practice times were Fortuna Honda's Marco Melandri and LCR Honda's Casey Stoner, who will start ninth and tenth on the grid.

"I'm disappointed because during the three practice sessions we worked in preparation for the race, using always race tyres," explained the Italian, referring to the fact that the leading free practice riders set their best times on qualifying tyres. "I would have preferred to decide my grid position on track, that's why I suggested adding 10 minutes to tomorrow's warm-up so that we could do warm-up and qualifying. I respect the Race Direction's decision but I have been penalised because I didn't use qualifying tyres this morning."

"This is an unfair decision," fumed Stoner. "It's ridiculous that I'm starting tenth when I never finished tenth in any session. This morning some riders in front of me used a qualifying tyre and I was sixth until they went faster. So now I'm starting on the fourth row when I should be on the second row. I was fifth at the end of Friday when everyone was on race tyres."

World Champion Valentino Rossi is due to start on Sunday's pole position, with championship leader Nicky Hayden second and Ducati's Loris Capirossi - the pre-event favourite - third.

An alternative method of deciding grid position, in the absence of qualifying, is to use the world championship standings.