Casey Stoner signalled his intentions to repeat his shock Qatar pole position of one year ago with an impressive performance on his Ducati debut, during Thursday's pair of opening free practice sessions.
The young Australian was beaten only by the Fiat Yamahas of
Valentino Rossi and
Colin Edwards, but was only 0.281secs from the Italian and without any major problems.
"We found some reasonably good tyres and straight away we were quicker than in testing a few weeks back, plus the track condition is good, so I'm really happy," began the Australian. "This morning and this afternoon I only had one set of tyres each session, so I'm quite happy with tyre life and the way they've performed.
"We've still got a fair bit to go through tomorrow, though we've pretty much narrowed rear choice down to two tyres. The new tyre rules aren't a drama - during testing we worked with that system to get accustomed to it, though we pretty much know what tyres to use here and
Jerez because we've tested at both tracks recently, so we've been able to minimise the selection," he added.
Experienced team-mate
Loris Capirossi was left five places and 0.5secs behind Stoner as he worked on perfecting a radical new rear set-up for his Desmosedici GP7. The Italian also claimed that Stoner's pace is giving him confidence.
"We started here with two different chassis set-ups, with very different settings in the rear end," confirmed Loris. "I first tried one of these solutions at Jerez and I liked it very much, so I am continuing in this direction, though after just two hours of practice it's not yet perfect for this track. We use a very hard front here, a specific tyre for this circuit only, and I don't yet feel 100 per cent confident in the tyre, but Casey is using the same front and he's done a lot of laps with it and done some very fast times, so that gives me confidence… The bike is working very well in race trim, racing is always different from practicing, so I'm feeling positive about the race."
