Repsol Honda’s Casey Stoner stands second in initial 1000cc test day at Valencia – MotoGP news
The 2011 MotoGP world champion, Casey Stoner of Repsol Honda recorded second fastest lap time during the post race Valencia test.
His best shot for the initial day was 1 minute and 32.322 seconds at the Ricardo Tormo circuit.
The two-day test session is held for the development of 1000cc 2012 MotoGP prototypes. The first day was dominated by two HRC riders Dani Pedrosa and Stoner, first and second respectively. The third fastest rider was Ben Spies aboard factory Yamaha M1.
The Aussie rider had some improvements during his 42-lap outing for the complete day. The session was held under dry conditions.
Stoner said, “Everything has gone pretty well for us we're struggling a little bit with the new tyres, we're finding they are giving us a little bit of chatter on the bike. We compared the bike that we tested in Jerez and Brno to the newer version we have
here and we found quite a lot of improvements.”
The Australian rider spent the session in make some changes to RC213V. He added that the chattering has decreased. Still he feels that there is a lot of margin to improve the 1000cc RC213V.
The 2011 MotoGP World champion added, “In general it was good to be out there on the 1000 and feel the horsepower, it's a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to feeling it on a lot of different tracks!”
The bike included some new parts since the feedback collected last time at Brno, Czech Republic. Both factory riders spent a complete test session to give feedback on the under-developed 1000cc prototype.
The day was completely dominated by Stoner’s Spanish teammate. Pedrosa posted his best lap time of 1 minute and 32.186 seconds.
He was able to find more stability and better feel from his RC213V than Stoner. Their former third Repsol teammate, Andrea Dovizioso was riding a Monster Yamaha Tech3.
The Italian rider was seventh in the final time sheet for the day. The new addition to the HRC family is Alvaro Bautista after the death of Marco Simoncelli at Sepang. Bautista will ride a factory setup RC213V under San Carlo Honda Gresini team livery.
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