Australia's Casey Stoner claimed his ninth pole in qualifying for Sunday's MotoGP season finale in Valencia.

The 2007 world champion edged Spain's Dani Pedrosa into second and Nicky Hayden of America into third on the dry circuit.

Valentino Rossi, who wrapped up another title last month with three races to go, was only 10th fastest.

Pedrosa, last year's pole and race winner in Valencia, clocked 1min 31.555secs, while Hayden posted 1:31.703.

Hayden, racing for the last time with Honda before moving to Ducati, had been fastest in all three free practice sessions and dominated for long periods in qualifying, only to see Stoner and Pedrosa go faster when it mattered.

The Yamaha pair of America's Colin Edwards and Britain's James Toseland will start from fourth and fifth on the grid respectively.

Stoner put his pole position down to an adjustment made to the rear suspension on his bike midway through qualifying.

He told motogp.com: "This afternoon we struggled a bit at the beginning of the session to get a decent set-up. We were a long way off the times.

"We tried something a little bit different in the rear shock and it seemed to really help us. We got a lot more feeling in the middle of the turn and were able to corner harder.

"Then we threw on the qualifying tyres and were quite lucky there - it had looked like it was going to rain and I'd end up at the back of the grid.

"But it stayed away and we were able to get our qualifiers in. The laps were reasonable, not great, but we had some nice clean laps."