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Bridgestone seeks qualifying pace |
Stoner was untouchable at his home circuit, smashing lap records with both qualifying and race tyres, but the other Bridgestone riders present were unable to make the required leap in lap time on the softer rubber.
After Stoner, the next best Bridgestone rider was Suzuki's Chris Vermeulen, some 1.439secs behind the reigning world champion, in sixth position. Stoner was 0.957secs in front of the fastest Michelin rider, Repsol Honda's Nicky Hayden.
"Casey's times were very impressive, not only in terms of his lap time on a qualifying tyre, but also on race tyres he has been exceptionally fast and consistent," confirmed Shinji Aoki, Bridgestone Motorsport's assistant manager of motorcycle race tyre development.
"Based on these first two tests [of 2008], we will also continue to look at our qualifying performance which is still behind that of our rivals, whose riders appear to make a big leap in lap time from race tyre to qualifier," added Aoki, when asked about the next stage of development for the company's 2008 spec rubber.
Meanwhile, Michelin was satisfied to have been 'very competitive' with all but Stoner.
"The general feeling from these tests is quite good, we learned a lot," said Jean-Philippe Weber, Michelin's director of motorcycle racing. "On the one hand we saw that Casey was very fast but on the other hand we were very competitive against all the other riders, so it isn't obvious where the exact performance is in terms of tyres.
"We continued working with both our 16.5-inch and 16-inch rears. More and more of our riders are now working with the 16, so for our upcoming tests we are looking at supplying 50/50 16.5s and 16s. The 16 is definitely growing.
"Although we focused mostly on rear tyres during this test, we did some more work adapting compounds for each of our riders with our two different fronts. We also tried a third profile front with Andrea [Dovizioso].
"We already tested this tyre last year at Motegi with Nicky and Colin [Edwards]. Both of them liked the tyre but when they tried it again later the results weren't so conclusive. Andrea had a good feeling with the tyre at Phillip Island, though the construction was a little too hard, so we will make some softer constructions for Jerez later this month."
Both Bridgestone and Michelin were without one top rider at Phillip Island; Valentino Rossi's Fiat Yamaha team missed the test while Repsol Honda's Dani Pedrosa is still injured.
Michelin took 12 pole positions last season, compared with six for Bridgestone. However, those statistics were exactly reversed in terms of race wins.
