Stoner looks for further improvement after Friday blitz

As he did in Britain, the Netherlands and Germany, Casey Stoner was simply unstoppable on the opening day of practice in America. The MotoGP World Champion set a new circuit record of 1´21.826 in the afternoon session having also led the morning run, with an advantage of 0.808 over his nearest rival.

With this in mind, Stoner has reason to be confident as he looks to take his fifth consecutive MotoGP pole position on Saturday afternoon. After all, his fastest times of the weekend in two visits to Laguna Seca have not even been in qualifying sessions, and the Ducati Marlboro rider is still looking for improvement at some very specific sections of the track.

`The Corkscrew feels a little different to last year; I haven´t really been able to `get it´ today,´ said Stoner after his jaw-dropping afternoon hot lap.

`That and a little bit of struggling with braking points on the last corner. If we can improve on these two points then I think that we can make a bit more time.

The Australian also appears to have already decided on an appropriate setup and tyre combination, having performed a series of experiments throughout the Friday runs.

`Today´s gone very well. We had a reasonably good setup this morning, but unfortunately we knew that we couldn´t use that kind of setting for the afternoon as it was a little bit too soft and as the track gets warmer the bike would start to move too much,´ Stoner explained.

`We had a few difficulties this afternoon; we were trying a couple of different tyre compounds and one really wasn´t working for us. In the end we went out with a different tyre after not finding any solution and the bike was working a lot better.

`It´s really nice to already be faster on the first day than we were last year. I really hope that we can keep this up.´