West serves up a shock in third Free Practice session

As happened on Friday morning, Casey Stoner was overthrown from the top spot in Saturday´s third Free Practice session by a late showing from one of his rivals. This time it was the turn of Kawasaki´s Anthony West as his fellow Australian set the quickest time of the weekend to date.

West recorded a 2´02.116 lap of the Malaysian track to top the MotoGP timesheet in the dry for the first time this season, undercutting his fellow Australian by just four-thousandths of a second whilst testing out his qualifying rubber. Last year he earned his best grid position of the season in Sepang, and looks capable of doing similar in the afternoon qualifying session for the 2008 Polini Malaysian Motorcycle Grand Prix after this latest result.

2007 racewinner Stoner was once again consistently fast, as were Fiat Yamaha´s Jorge Lorenzo and Valentino Rossi. The Fiat Yamaha duo were riding comfortably in the low 2´02´s, having been pleased with the performance of their respective M1 machines on Friday.

Repsol Honda´s Dani Pedrosa benefitted from further dry time with which to setup his bike, pacing fifth ahead of Andrea Dovizioso, Shinya Nakano, Loris Capirossi, Nicky Hayden and yesterday´s fastest man, Colin Edwards. The latter was the only rider not to cut his time from Friday during the session.