Stoner gets back in the saddle at Brno test

Monday, 18 August 2008

Nineteen MotoGP riders were on track for the first day of post-race testing at Brno on Monday, with Casey Stoner the fastest at midday.

MotoGP World Champion Casey Stoner was one of nineteen MotoGP riders staying on at the Brno circuit after the Cardion ab Grand Prix Ceske republiky, and the man who had continually laid down the fastest times of the weekend reassumed the top spot at midday on Monday.

Emerging from the Ducati Marlboro garage at 11am local time, it took Stoner less than five laps to make his mark on the testing session. The Australian –who crashed out of Sunday´s race whilst leading from pole- laid down a 1´57.403 lap to assert his authority early on. He did so using the Desmosedici GP8 machine, with no GP9 activity scheduled for either he, teammate Marco Melandri or test rider Niccolo Canepa.

The satellite version of the 2008 bike was once again put to good use by Brno runner-up Toni Elias, one of the rider performing the most laps of the track on Monday morning. The Alice Team rider was just over three-tenths of a second slower than factory man Stoner in the run-up to the lunch break.

Another podium finisher continued to go round in the top three in testing, as Loris Capirossi experienced his first laps with the 2009 Rizla Suzuki GSV-R prototype. Both he and teammate Chris Vermeulen are using the machine over the course of the two-day test, with test rider Nobuatsu Aoki set for some laps on Tuesday.

Racewinner Valentino Rossi rolled the M1 out of his Fiat Yamaha garage at just before midday, in order to test tyres and the new engine electronics brought to the Czech Republic for his assessment.

Despite saying that he saw little point in testing following a `disaster´ in tyre performance, Dani Pedrosa joined in the development work for Repsol Honda. He had been pencilled in to use the pneumatic valve RC212V engine at this latest test, but will perhaps leave that particular task for test rider Tadayuki Okada –drafted in to replace the injured Nicky Hayden onboard the American´s version of the machine.

The final test rider on track is Olivier Jacque, taking turns with Anthony West in riding the Kawasaki Ninja ZX-RR at Brno on Monday.

A full report –plus times from today´s test- will follow at the conclusion of the day.