Edwards leads Phillip Island tests

The MotoGP pre-season tests have moved to Phillip Island in Australia, with Texan Colin Edwards leading the charge with qualifying set-up on his Tech 3 Yamaha. He held a half-second advantage over Aussie and newly-crowned world champ Casey Stoner on his Ducati. De Angelis closed up to third best time - a second in arrears of the leader - on his Honda.

Results at this stage of the game are anything but conclusive, but Yamaha will no doubt draw some comfort from the times after suffering a bruising 2007 season.

Yamaha reports: Just six days after an exhausting but successful test at the Sepang circuit in Malaysia, Edwards clocked his best lap of 1.29.566 on the first of two Michelin qualifying tyres he tried shortly after 1.00pm. Evaluating new Michelin tyres and the latest electronics upgrades from Yamaha, the American's best time on race tyres today was a 1.30.832 set in a seven-lap run this afternoon as the Texan completed 77 laps in close to perfect conditions. That was the third fastest time on race tyres with reigning world champion Casey Stoner quickest in race trim.

Colin Edwards, Yamaha (pictured):
"It was a good day. I started with the same setting I finished in Malaysia and played around with that for the day. The bike feels good at this track compared to what I raced with a few months ago. Yamaha has been working hard and the new parts are definitely a step in the right direction, particularly with the electronics, which has helped on corner entry and exit. With a qualifying tyre in Malaysia my time didn't get any better. I had a couple of handling issues with the qualifier in Sepang so once I got a good pace going I chucked a couple of qualifiers in. It is the first day but you never know what the weather is going to do down here, and it could be raining tomorrow. We wanted to make sure with the adjustments we were going to make for the qualifier that it was the right way. In Sepang I had too much weight on the rear. The rear was taking over and running me wide and we made a change to get more weight on the front and get it to turn a bit better. It seemed fine and I'm happy with the lap time."

Casey Stoner, Ducati:
"Everything went really well today, the feeling with the bike was perfect almost straight away. The new Bridgestones, which had already given us positive feedback at Sepang, also worked perfectly here at Phillip Island - one of them in particular improves the bike a lot in the exit of the corners, especially in the final section of the track. We've also taken a step forward with some small changes to the front, which have made the bike more stable and improved grip to the point where my best time came without pushing, on a tyre that already had 17 laps on it. I'm also really happy with the latest specs of the engine and the way it is responding under acceleration coming out of the corners. The weather was basically perfect all day apart from when the wind picked up a little in the afternoon but the smaller fairing, which we used for the race here in October, meant that it wasn't a problem.

Towards the end of the day my shoulder was a little sore because this is such a physical track, with a lot of fast corners, but it is still better than it was in Malaysia."

Chris Vermeulen, Suzuki:
"It's good to be back in Australia to test again, although we could do with it being a bit warmer. I got a lot of laps in today as we need to get through as much work as possible here this week. The Factory has certainly acted on the information Loris and I gave them towards the end of last year, but before we can thoroughly test the new parts we need to get the settings right, and like Loris I spent a large part of today sorting those out. I know there is more to come over the week and I hope we will improve dramatically on those times and positions."

Links:
Yamaha-racing.com;
Suzuki-racing.com;
Ducati.com