Casey Stoner stamps his lead concluding the final test – MotoGP news
Monday night concluded the mid season testing at the Qatar circuit. The first race of the 18-race season, Commercialbank Grand Prix of Qatar will be on Sunday, 20 March on the track at Losail.
This will be the final season for 800cc MotoGP machines, as 2012 will bring back the 1000cc era as per new regulations.
The final day of the last pre-season test was struck by a sand storm hours prior to the test start. He test seemed to get under some tough conditions after the strong winds blew and covered the tarmac with a layer of fine sand. However, when the rider
started the test with a slow rhythm, after some laps track conditions started to get better and the riders were able to ride fast shoeing some competitive lap times for the final night.
King of the final night was again Casey Stoner on his Repsol Honda RC212V machine with a lap time of 1:55.681, followed by the teammate capable Dani Pedrosa with a time of 1:55.745. Both teammates were separated by 0.064 seconds and the only two riders
to run under the 1:56 time circle.
HRC rider Stoner was happy after his joy ride on dominating RC212V, but felt the test night could hung-up after the sand storm struck the track. But after the start of the night it was a bit tough to ride on the track, yet managed some good lap times
later.
As the lap times displayed by the riders have improvement with all of them, though Honda team is more than satisfied by the accomplishment of Qatar test it also means that other rivals will also be running to for further enhancements in their set-up.
It leaves Repsol Honda team still on its toes to maintain at the top.
“We found a good rider position which I'm really happy with, having moved my position more towards the rear in Sepang - to try and find more grip, here we can run a more neutral set-up and everything seems to be working well. We did some more work
on electronics tonight and also on the tires, but generally worked in preparation for the weekend,” he said.
Stoner has chosen the standard 2011 chassis set-up for his RC212V, for the season, his both machines are loaded up with same specs.
Dani Pedrosa of Repsol Honda Team was the top fast seat at the end of first night of test at Qatar.
“It was very windy out on track and quite difficult to ride at maximum, but the grip was not so bad. It was cooler than yesterday and we improved our lap times, which is positive. Today we tried the new front fork, we have continued to work with electronics
and have tried both the hard and the softer tires,” he said.
Third teammate of Repsol Honda Team, Andrea Dovizioso was on fifth place completing the four positions of RC212V in top-five places, separated by the Factory Yamaha Racing rider Ben Spies in third place on conclusion. The practice for first race will
start on the upcoming Thursday.
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