By Lynne Huntting
Fog delayed the start of the Saturday action at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, causing a rearrangement in the AMA schedule to accommodate the AMA Superbike session.
The track fog is quirky, moving in and out between the eleven corners of the elevated 2.238-mile road course. Once line of sight was confirmed around the track, the
MotoGP practice session started.
Casey Stoner was one of the last to go on track for the hour-long session, but like cream he rose quickly to the top, where he remained. He continued to better his times each time he went on track. The Ducati rider's best lap time was 1min 21.461secs, 0.365secs faster than his best Friday time.
"The start of the session was cold and still a little foggy," stated Stoner. "From the guys who went out we could see that the lap times weren't there so we decided to stay in the garage for a while and wait until the track came up to a temperature that would give us some useable data.
"We actually struggled a little bit with the set-up, we couldn't quite find the right balance for the bike this morning. We weren't using the same tyres as yesterday and the conditions were really cold, so that played quite a big part, but in the end we were able to adapt the bike and set some consistent laps at the end, with a decent lap time.
"With the track conditions a little higher we should be in good shape. My target for qualifying is a place on the front row," he said modestly.
Newly re-signed factory Yamaha rider,
Valentino Rossi, was 0.707secs slower than Stoner in second position, followed by
Shinya Nakano (San Carlo Honda Gresini),
Chris Vermeulen (Rizla Suzuki MotoGP), and
Marco Melandri (Ducati Team).
All riders were faster than Friday's best times.
Repsol Honda's
Dani Pedrosa sat out the morning practice as he was in too much pain. He will try and qualify Saturday afternoon. Pedrosa, who now sits second in the standings after last week's accident, wants to race this weekend for the points. It has not been easy for him because of the discomfort, special splinting and bandaging of his two broken left fingers, broken wrist and sprained right ankle.
