Casey Stoner dominates day 2 of MotoGP testing at Sepang

The official MotoGP World Championship second training session at the Sepang circuit has left Casey Stoner as the fastest rider. The Australian, who could not get out on track yesterday due to strong back pain, has returned to action proving he is still the world champion of the category, setting a time of 2:00.895. That is a good lap time for his first testing day with the Honda RC213V on Malaysian soil. With this time, the 1 is close to the pole position set by Rossi in 2006, which was 2:00.605, also with a 1000cc bike.

Behind the Australian, a surprising Ben Spies finished, only 0.157s off the Honda rider’s pace. This makes it clear that the Yamaha M1 1000cc has undergone an important evolution with an eye to the future. Undoubtedly, the technicians and mechanics have worked hard in Japan and have produced a machine that can overshadow the all-powerful Honda.

Further behind Spies is his teammate, who dominated the first day of training at the Sepang track, Jorge Lorenzo finished third in this second session, only 0.173s behind today’s leader. The top three riders are therefore very close, all within two tenths of each other, the three best of the day.

Closing the top five of this second test at Sepang is Dani Pedrosa, who finished fourth, more than 0.6 seconds behind his teammate, but improving on yesterday’s result. Little by little, step by step, he is getting better and showing more strength with the RC213V. Meanwhile, fifth place went to Cal Crutchlow, who was almost seven tenths behind, closing out the Yamaha-Honda dominance on this second day.

The big surprise of the day was the time set by Héctor Barberá, whatever anyone thinks and whoever’s wheel he was following. Right now Barby is the best Honda rider in the test times, 0.893s behind the leader and ahead of Rossi by 0.098s, in seventh place. Some have criticised the 8 for setting this time behind Rossi’s GP12, but it is already an achievement to keep pace and show speed with a GPZero against one of the new machines. Moreover, from what we have learned, he was only followed by half a lap.

For Álvaro Bautista it was another good day of adaptation. The Gresini rider finished 9th, just behind Rossi and with a time more than one second off Stoner. However, he felt better and more motivated, so the 19 is at full throttle and never stops working. Closing the top ten was Nicky Hayden, the 69 rode in the morning but then began to feel more pain in the injured area during the winter training, so he decided to get off the bike and hand over the work with the GP12 to Battaini. We will see how the Ducati rider feels tomorrow.

The rest of the riders were 11th Stefan Bradl, more than 1.5s behind Stoner, followed by Karel Abraham in 12th, more than 1.7s back, while the test riders Nakasuga and Battaini finished 13th and 14th, both more than 2 seconds behind the day’s leader.

As for the CRTs, the best was once again Colin Edwards with a time of 2:05.603, 4.7s behind Casey Stoner, and from 15th position. Meanwhile, Iván Silva was 16th, 9.4 seconds behind Jordi Torres, more than 10 seconds off the leader on this day. For his part, Pietri was 18th and nearly 12 seconds back at Sepang.

A lot of work for the CRTs if they want to improve those times, because for the moment they are far off, although Edwards’s Suter maintains the benchmark of 4-5 seconds’ distance from the factory bikes. We will see what they can do tomorrow on the final test day at the Malaysian track.

Timing results, day 2 Sepang MotoGP