Between the showers, the Melbourne sun shone brightly and Stoner was quick to respond, leading both the morning and afternoon sessions to put his #27 Ducati over half a second clear of
Dani Pedrosa with three minutes of the afternoon hour to go - at which point Stoner fell from his Desmosedici at the slow Honda hairpin.
Fellow Ducati rider and good friend Chaz Davies had suddenly spun out at exactly the same spot moments earlier, prompting speculation of fluid on the track. Davies' d'Antin team-mate Alex Barros also ran wide at the same place soon after.
While Stoner and Davies walked back to the pits shrugging their shoulders, Casey's 2008 team-mate
Marco Melandri leapfrogged Pedrosa to take second position at the end of day one. The Honda Gresini rider was 0.269secs slower than Stoner's best in FP2, but the Australian's fastest lap actually came during FP1 and placed the 21-year-old a substantial 0.423secs quicker than the Italian. Stoner was the only rider to go quicker in the morning.
Pedrosa, fifth this morning, took third at the chequered flag to be the top Michelin rider, with
Valentino Rossi - riding in a special red and white Abarth livery - 0.132secs slower for Fiat Yamaha.
Kawasaki's
Randy de Puniet had been Stoner's nearest challenger in the morning but slipped to fifth in the afternoon, just ahead of Barros, 2008 WSBK rider Carlos Checa and Stoner's team-mate
Loris Capirossi.
2006 world champion
Nicky Hayden and Kawasaki's home rider
Anthony West completed the top ten, with
John Hopkins the lead Suzuki in eleventh and
Shinya Nakano twelfth for Konica Minolta Honda.
Davies, riding in only his second
MotoGP event, spent the first 20 minutes of the session in the pit garage having a technical problem attended to. When the Welshman finally emerged, he took just five laps to set the 11th fastest time, before being bumped back two positions by the chequered flag - partly due to his late fall.
