Valentino Rossi will bid to land his sixth MotoGP title from the second row after he finished fourth in qualifying.

Fiat Yamaha rider Rossi will secure the crown on Sunday with a podium finish, while reigning World Champion Stoner must win the A-Style Grand Prix of Japan to keep the title race going until next weekend on home soil in Australia and hope the Italian finishes off the podium.

Rossi currently leads Stoner, who won his maiden MotoGP title in Japan last year, by 87 points after he won the last four races.

"Honestly I´m a bit disappointed because the front row was our target today, but anyway fourth isn´t too bad! Unfortunately we spent a bit too much time with the race tyres and started our qualifying sequence a few minutes late, this meant that I was maybe one or two minutes late going out with my last tyre and I got a bit caught up with traffic when (Alex) de Angelis fell," said Rossi.

"Our race pace is quite good so I am confident that we can be in the fight, although we will have to get a good start. We have one or two small problems that we need to work on so we will use the warm-up to check a few things and I think we can improve a little bit more. I am not thinking about the championship right now, I will just aim for the podium and see what happens."

But while all eyes were on team-mate Rossi and Stoner, Spaniard Lorenzo headed into the final minutes of session on pole before he wrapped up the fourth pole position of his rookie MotoGP season with a lap record of one minute 45.543 seconds in the final moments of qualifying.

Lorenzo has only finished in the top three on one occasion at Motegi, but has secured a podium finish every time he has started on the front row, including his last two races at Misano and Indianapolis.

"I can say that now I'm in one of the best shapes of my life," said Lorenzo after he secured his first pole in five months.

"I'm riding so fast, and also the bike and the tyres are working well, because if they weren't, I wouldn't be like that.

"The team is doing a great job working on the set-up of the bike and the chassis. This result is fantastic."

Stoner, who was fastest in Friday and Saturday practice, secured a ninth straight start from the front row 0.288secs behind Lorenzo after he opted against a late bid to topple the Spaniard at the top of the timesheet and did not emerge from the garage in the final minutes of the session.

"For the race, we're in quite good shape," said Stoner, who has crashed out in his last two races.

"We've still got a couple of things we want to improve before tomorrow, but we're running reasonably consistent lap times and we know we can go a little bit quicker.

"So with a couple more changes for the morning, if it's going to be dry, we should be okay."

Stoner's future Ducati team-mate Hayden completes the front row for Honda in their home race in 1min 45.971secs, with World Championship leader Rossi just over half a second behind team-mate Lorenzo.

Repsol Honda´s Dani Pedrosa, who still has a mathematical possibility of taking the title as he sits seven points behind Stoner with four races left, lines up alongside Rossi.

Loris Capirossi, the winner in the last three years at Motegi, rounds out the second row, with Colin Edwards, who had snatched pole with 23 minutes remaining, Randy de Puniet and Shinya Nakano on the third row.