In-form local favorite Cal Crutchlow will start his home British Grand Prix on pole after topping the times in final qualifying at a wet Silverstone Saturday. Fresh from claiming his maiden MotoGP win also in the rain at Brno in the Czech Republic last month, the Honda rider maintained his stunning form for his third career pole. The 30-year-old, Britain's first MotoGP winner since Barry Sheene 35 years ago, is joined on the front row by Italian veteran Valentino Rossi on a Yamaha and Spain's Maverick Vinales for Suzuki. "I took a lot of pleasure managing to do this in front of my fans," said Crutchlow. "I didn't really honestly believe I was pushing that much. In the first sector I wasn't so fast and then the rest of the lap I thought I'd just keep the lap together and the next one I'll push. "But the next lap I started to push and I nearly crashed at turn one." Ahead of the seventh last race of the season Marc Marquez, who took fifth in qualifying, leads the championship by 53 points from Rossi. Marquez sat out the last section of qualifying after falling victim to the slick surface. He has for company on the second row fourth-fastest qualifier Dani Pedrosa and Irishman Eugene Laverty. Laverty may have been on target for pole itself but also had a late spill in the difficult conditions. Britain's Scott Redding is on the third row with Andrea Iannone and world champion Jorge Lorenzo. Crutchlow went to the top of the times with a lap of 2min 19.265sec with seven minutes of qualifying still to go, and no rider was able to better him. Marquez was on target for second but crashed out at Copse with Rossi eventually taking second, a considerable 0.998sec shy of Crutchlow's time. "Starting from second place is very important for tomorrow's race, but now we have to wait for the conditions, because on the dry we aren't very strong," said Rossi, who won last year's race at Silverstone for the first time.
