Anthony West suffered the first ever
MotoGP night fall, when he lost the front of his Kawasaki ZX-RR through the final right-hander before the start/finish straight, during the opening night of testing at Qatar on Thursday.
It was a sizeable fall, made all the more worrying due to the season-opening Qatar Grand Prix being just over one week away, but the 27-year-old Australian fortunately emerged with only bruising and he later returned to the track on his second bike.
"Tonight, our main task was to get accustomed to the floodlit circuit and to try a new chassis option we have. The frame we tried has made a big improvement to the rear grip, which we have had trouble with previously," began West.
"The bike felt really good and I started pushing a bit hard, which caused me to crash. I lost the front at the last corner and I'm a bit bruised but no major problems."
West was one of a handful of riders to take part in the previous Qatar night test, which was held on a partially floodlit track, using road bikes.
"The lighting of the circuit is not totally consistent and it is a bit strange riding at night," he admitted. "The track does look a bit different, and it's hard to find my lines, but overall it's not hugely dissimilar to how it is in the day. I hope that tomorrow we can get some more laps on the bike in these conditions and continue working with this chassis."
West finished the day 18th an last following his fall, while injured team-mate
John Hopkins was an impressive seventh quickest.
The 24-year-old Anglo-American managed 71 laps and a best time of 1min 56.614secs, just over a second off
Casey Stoner, the fastest man of the session, and a mere 0.043 seconds off sixth placed rider,
Andrea Dovizioso.
"The priority today was to decide on a tyre for the first race next week and we evaluated many different combinations of both race and qualifying tyres," said Hopper.
