Jorge Lorenzo will start the British Motorcycle Grand Prix in pole position after recording the fastest lap in qualifying.

The Fiat Yamaha rider registered a lap of 2 minutes 3.3 seconds Saturday, beating Randy de Puniet and Dani Pedrosa, both of Honda, for Sunday's race at Silverstone.

Spain's Lorenzo leads the standings with 90 points going into the fifth race of the season. His compatriot Pedrosa is second on 65.

Nine-time world champion Valentino Rossi is third in the standings, but is ruled out for possibly the rest of the year after breaking his leg ahead of the Italian Grand Prix.

Nicky Hayden qualified above team-mate Casey Stoner, for the first since joining Ducati Marlboro at the start of 2008, on Saturday at Silverstone.

The pair will start in fifth and sixth places for the first British motorcycle grand prix to be held at the Northamptonshire track since 1986, with Hayden lapping just 0.062sec quicker than 20-time race winner Stoner.

“We made a step forward today,” said Hayden. “Yesterday I knew that we weren’t as far off as we seemed and even though we didn’t quite have the right feeling for the conditions a few small changes have helped make us faster.

“That said, my race pace isn’t great - there are a couple of sections where I’m losing quite a lot of time and if we want to have a good race we need to find another few tenths. It will be an interesting race tomorrow because it is one thing to ride on your own at a new circuit and another thing altogether to mix it up in a group.

“We’ll find out exactly where we are when the lights go out tomorrow.”

Stoner will also be looking for set-up improvements during morning warm-up.

“My race pace is fairly decent but the truth is we haven’t improved as much as we would like,” said the Australian. “The biggest problem we’re having at the moment is keeping the heat in the tyres and that brings on a bunch of other issues. The temperature drops off with every lap that goes by and as a result so does the grip.

“We also tried to make the bike more stable over the bumps but we lost a bit of handling and rear grip. We’re doing our best to solve the problems and luckily still have the warm-up to try a few more things. Either way I think the race can be much better for us than qualifying.”