Elias tops Saturday morning session on drying Indianapolis track

After the near-washout of Friday at The Brickyard, the MotoGP riders were given a near-full dry session to round off their Free Practice activity. The damp Indianapolis circuit was rapidly cleared in most places by some pleasant temperatures, leading to times some ten seconds faster than those recorded yesterday.

The quickest rider of what could perhaps be the only dry run of the weekend was Alice Team´s Toni Elias, recording a 1´43.708 time as `leadership´ of the session changed thick and fast.

World Championship leader Valentino Rossi had been confident of his potential in the dry, something confirmed with his becoming the second fastest rider of the weekend so far. The Fiat Yamaha man was just 0.072 slower than Elias´ marker, with local hero Nicky Hayden and his Repsol Honda teammate Dani Pedrosa all under two-tenths of a second from the top spot. Pedrosa had been the last classified rider on Friday in the wet, getting to grips with a completely new track and package.

Andrea Dovizioso was the fastest of the Honda satellite lineup on Saturday morning behind the bars of his JiR Team Scot RC212V, with San Carlo Honda Gresini´s Alex de Angelis just behind. Ben Spies, Sylvain Guintoli, Chris Vermeulen and Randy de Puniet rounded off the fastest ten in the session.

2007 World Champion Casey Stoner was surprisingly off the pace in the dry, in seventeenth place and some 2´186 off Elias´ time, although tyre choice may have had much to do with the separation between the factory and satellite Ducati competitors. His fellow Australian Anthony West went from being the fastest rider on Friday to the slowest on Saturday.