"I didn't have feeling so I couldn't ride the bike," Melandri says. "But we have made a big step forward. We modified the traction control and made some changes to the chassis and the weight distribution, and now I can start to feel the bike and push."
We await the race to see if the 25-year-old Italian can improve on this morning's effort. Meanwhile, a Ducati insider says: "If the bike starts to move, Casey just keeps the throttle on and rides through it. The others let the throttle off."
Final word to Stoner: "It's a motorcycle with two wheels and a handlebar."
Friday am - Toseland Goes Slower to Finish Higher
James Toseland is taking a go slower to get there faster approach to the business of learning the 2.597-mile Le Mans circuit this weekend.
Toseland is in the middle of a run of five circuits on which he has never previously raced, and he is disappointed with the 12th position - his worst of the year - that he achieved in the last round in China on his Tech 3 Yamaha.
He and manager Roger Burnett figure that part of the problem was that James was trying to conquer the 3.281-mile Shanghai track just too quickly. "If you try and learn it quickly, you're bound to be going throttle-brake, throttle-brake, throttle-brake," Burnett said.
The result was that Toseland inadvertently ended up with a setup that ran a lot of traction control. "We were braking hard, so we never had the balance of the bike right." Burnett said. "So here we're taking a different approach - learn slower, and build, build, build."
At Estoril, the first of the new-to-Toseland tracks, he was only 1.548 seconds behind the fastest rider,
Dani Pedrosa, after the first day's practice. In qualifying he cut the gap to pole-sitter
Jorge Lorenzo to just 1.075 seconds.
In China JT lagged by 1.635 seconds to
Casey Stoner after day one, and reduced this to 1.115 seconds to pole qualifier
Colin Edwards on the Saturday. So, considering that he is facing a new bike/new team/new category/new circuit situation, the guy is learning tracks quickly.
