Stoner strikes again

Australian rider Casey Stoner was fastest during the first day of the second official testing round at Sepang in Malaysia, almost four tenths of a second faster than team mate Dani Pedrosa.

Hot on the back of his excellent pre-season form, Stoner is shaping up to be the rider to beat in 2011, and if he can avoid any crashes or high-sides he stands to dominate the season.

Riding the Repsol Honda RC212V race bike, Stoner had this to say at the media conference after the test: "We had a really good day today. From the beginning I felt more comfortable with the bike again, like I understood the bike a little better. We managed to work on set-up, but we are still doing a chassis comparison, finding strong points and weak points on both.

Stoner revealed that even different set-ups are yielding similar lap times, which suggests that he's comfortable on the new bike in a range of different scenarios. "It's difficult to choose one [set-up] or the other," the Australian revealed. "Whatever set-up we throw at them we seem to be able to run pretty similar lap times. We’re very happy with the progress we made today and everything and everybody seems to be working well."

Second fastest was Dani Pedrosa, showing excellent speed despite his healing shoulder. "Physically my shoulder felt better on the bike than in the first test. I had two more weeks and I’ve become stronger from training, so my condition is getting better," said the Spaniard.

Pedrosa was almost four tenths behind Stoner, and with two Honda's out front it could be an ominous sign for Yamaha, Ducati et al.

Third fastest was Jorge Lorenzo on the Yamaha, almost five tenths of a second behind Stoner, and the 2010 champion had this to say: "We have our chassis for 2011 now and we are working on it as well as our engine spec. With the improvements we’ve made we can now brake a little later and enter the corners a little more quickly as well so I was able to do some good fast consistent lap times this afternoon when it was still very hot on the track."

Lorenzo's team mate Ben Spies was sixth fastest, while the Ducati's of Valentino Rossi and Nicky Hayden ended up ninth and 12th fastest respectively.

Rossi was positive about the test, but said that his shoulder is still causing him some grief and is hampering his lap times: "For the most part today, I was between fifth and sixth place, which is the goal we had set. I’m still losing about three tenths due to the shoulder, because I’m still stronger in the left turns, whereas I’m normally the opposite; the rest we’ll have to find by working on the bike. I’m also happy because we spent all our time on the hard tyres, which we struggled with before today."

Second Sepang test period day one times:

1 Casey Stoner Honda 2:00.987 
2 Dani Pedrosa Honda 2:01.360 
3 Jorge Lorenzo Yamaha 2:01.468 
4 Colin Edwards Yamaha 2:01.654 
5 Andrea Dovizioso Honda 2:01.747 
6 Ben Spies Yamaha 2:01.808 
7 Hiroshi Aoyama Honda 2:01.939 
8 Marco Simoncelli Honda 2:01.996 
9 Valentino Rossi Ducati 2:01.999 
10 Alvaro Bautista Suzuki 2:02.224 
11 Hector Barbera Ducati 2:02.645 
12 Nicky Hayden Ducati 2:02.680 
13 Toni Elias Honda 2:02.779 
14 Randy de Puniet Ducati 2:02.920 
15 Cal Crutchlow Yamaha 2:02.936 
16 Loris Capirossi Ducati 2:03.082 
17 Karel Abraham Ducati 2:03.167 
18 T1 Yamaha 2:03.676 
19 Nobuatsu Aoki Suzuki 2:04.639 
20 T2 Yamaha 2:04.958 

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