For the second consecutive day Casey Stoner topped the time sheets during MotoGP testing in Sepang, Malaysia. The Australian led a one-two-three finish for the Repsol Honda team, after besting team-mate Dani Pedrosa by 0.058 seconds on the final lap of the day with a time of 2 min. 0.171 sec. Andrea Dovizioso rounded out the top three, 0.360 seconds adrift of Stoner. Once again two Yamahas also made it into the top five. Factory Yamaha rider Ben Spies had the fourth fastest time of the day followed by defending champ Jorge Lorenzo in fifth. The top Ducati rider today was Aspar Ducati’s Hector Barbera in tenth place. Valentino Rossi was forced to take the day off due to illness.
Though Honda continues to dominate pre-season testing, Stoner was somewhat disappointed with today’s outing.
“We tested a lot of things today, 2011 forks and things like that, but a good 60 percent of the day was pretty useless for us,” said Stoner. “We tried a lot of configurations with the 2011 fork and shock. We found quite a lot more chattering with it. We couldn’t really get on with it. So that was a bit disappointing.”
“Yesterday we were working on making the bike better with what we had, and just comparing the two chassis options. Today we stayed 90 percent of the time on one chassis, just trying different fork configurations and changing geometry to try and get the bike to work with the new forks.”
“We never really found something that felt good, so I was a little bit disappointed to have spent so much time on that, but it was necessary to do.”
Testing at Sepang concludes on Thursday evening.
2011 MotoGP Sepang 2 Test Results – Day 2
1. Casey Stoner AUS Repsol Honda Team 2m 0.171s 42 laps
2. Dani Pedrosa ESP Repsol Honda Team 2m 0.229s 41 laps
3. Andrea Dovizioso ITA Repsol Honda Team 2m 0.531s 46 laps
4. Ben Spies USA Yamaha Factory Racing 2m 0.824s 54 laps
5. Jorge Lorenzo ESP Yamaha Factory Racing 2m 0.931s 45 laps
6. Marco Simoncelli ITA San Carlo Honda Gresini 2m 1.033s 52 laps
7. Hiroshi Aoyama JPN San Carlo Honda Gresini 2m 1.439s 64 laps
8. Colin Edwards USA Monster Yamaha Tech 3 2m 1.738s 44 laps
9. Bike #T2 JPN Yamaha test Rider 2m 1.792s 23 laps
10. Hector Barbera ESP Aspar Team 2m 1.909s 64 laps
11. Alvaro Bautista ESP Rizla Suzuki MotoGP 2m 2.035s 35 laps
12. Nicky Hayden USA Ducati Team 2m 2.208s 44 laps
13. Bike #T1 JPN Yamaha Test Rider 2m 2.596s 54 laps
14. Randy de Puniet FRA Pramac Racing Team 2m 2.604s 35 laps
15. Loris Capirossi ITA Pramac Racing Team 2m 2.624s 39 laps
16. Karel Abraham CZE Cardion AB Motoracing 2m 2.676s 36 laps
17. Toni Elias ESP LCR Honda MotoGP 2m 2.941s 60 laps
18. Cal Crutchlow GBR Monster Yamaha Tech 3 2m 2.984s 40 laps
19. Nobuatsu Aoki JPN Suzuki Test Rider 2m 4.582s 46 laps
Fastest day one lap:
Casey Stoner AUS Repsol Honda 2m 0.987s
Fastest Sepang I test lap:
Marco Simoncelli ITA San Carlo Honda Gresini 2m 0.757s (Day 3)
