Biaggi grabs provisional pole for Brazil GP

Brian Homewood, Reuters, Rio de Janeiro

Italy's Max Biaggi took provisional pole for the Brazilian Grand Prix after the first day of practice on Thursday and looked determined to delay Valentino Rossi's title celebrations for as long as possible.

Earlier on Thursday, Pramac Honda announced that Biaggi had signed a three-year deal to ride for them starting next season.

It said Biaggi, the winner of four consecutive world 250cc titles from 1994 to 1997, would ride a Honda RCV211 - the same four-stroke bike on which Rossi has dominated this season.

Biaggi, who has had a frustrating season chasing his arch- rival and compatriot, sped round the Nelson Piquet circuit in one minute, 51.854 seconds on his Yamaha in his tenth lap.

Rossi, who can clinch the inaugural MotoGP championship on Saturday, was second fastest on his Honda, 0.012 seconds behind Biaggi, who is third in the riders' standings.

"It's a good feeling to be up front on day one," said Biaggi, who has managed a solitary win at last month's Czech GP this season.

"The track is very slippery so it isn't easy to find good traction. I pushed hard today and I've been very focused since the start of morning practice, thinking about how to use the favorite parts of the track to my advantage."

World champion Rossi, who has won nine of the 11 races so far this year, needs to win Saturday's race and hope that his Japanese teammate Tohru Ukawa fails to finish on the podium.

Ukawa, who is 89 points adrift of Rossi with 125 left up for grabs, could manage only eleventh place with a best time of 1:52.498.

Biaggi's Spanish teammate Carlos Checa was third with 1:51.975 despite twice skidding off his Yamaha.

"We've been having some front-end push problems here," he said.

"We did improve at the front end but we need to work on this some more, at the moment I can do one fast lap but it's not comfortable to keep pushing for much longer than that."

In the 250cc class, Toni Elias of Spain set the fastest lap ahead of championship leader Marco Melandri of Italy. Another Spaniard Fonsi Nieto, who is 32 points behind Melandri in the standings, was third. All three ride Aprilias.

Defending champion Manuel Poggiali of San Marino took provisional pole in the 125cc class, just ahead of championship leader and Aprilia rider Arnaud Vincent of France. Gilera rider Poggiali trails Vincent by 23 points in the title race.