MotoGP world champion
Casey Stoner took an early version of next year's Ducati Desmosedici GP9 - which features a carbon fibre frame - to the top of the Monday test times at Catalunya.
Stoner wasn't expected to test the machine until Tuesday, but the threat of poor weather saw the reigning MotoGP world champion - third in Sunday's race - ride the GP9 alongside test riders Vittoriano Guareschi and Nicola Canepa.
Stoner quickly felt at home on the new machine, setting a best time of 1min 42.632secs on race tyres - 0.2secs under his best lap time in Sunday's grand prix - and also set the best lap time of the day, a 1min 41.533secs, with qualifying tyres. Stoner's pole time with the GP8 was a 1min 41.186secs.
"I'm happy with the way today has gone. The objective was to understand whether this new chassis concept has potential and I'd say that for now it looks to be the case," he said of the carbon fibre frame.
"We were quickly into some decent times using the same set-up as the GP8. We barely changed anything to adapt it to the characteristics of the GP9 and I immediately felt an improvement so that is positive. I'm sure that with more time to work on it we can go much faster, although that is not the current brief.
"We'll have time to test it in the winter. Tomorrow we'll get back on my GP8 because we have some important tyre testing to do. There is still a lot of the 2008 season left and we want to be competitive," he declared.
Ducati Corse general manager Filippo Preziosi explained why next year's machine was being given to the factory riders at such an early stage in the 2008 season - Sunday's Catalan Grand Prix having marked round seven of 18.
