Friday, October 16, 2009

Casey Stoner took the second free practice hour for Sunday’s 2009 Iveco Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix by the throat with a blistering mid-session performance at Phillip Island this morning.

Just 10 minutes into the one-hour session Stoner’s Ducati dipped under the best Friday time set by Valentino Rossi’s Yamaha, clocking 1min 30.865secs – the Australian being the first man to get under the 1:31 barrier this weekend.

A sequence of super-fast laps saw Stoner reduce the time to 1:30.680 just a couple of minutes later on his 11th lap, and while Rossi immediately embarked on a long run the World Champion was only able to chip away a tenth at a time and could only get within 0.221 of Stoner’s mark.

Next to make a name for himself was Dani Pedrosa, the Honda star who is fighting Stoner for third place in this season’s World Championship. The Spaniard, looking for his second win of the year this weekend, clocked 1:30.674 with 39 minutes of the session remaining to be just six-1000ths clear of his Australian rival at that point.

In the session’s major incident Randy de Puniet lost the back end of his LCR Honda at Turn 1 halfway through. The Frenchman looked to have saved it but came off the bike on the grass just before the gravel trap, though he was able to walk away apparently unharmed.

Stoner then went top of the timings again with a 1:30.626 before a violent rain shower interrupted proceedings with 25 minutes of the session to go.

When they came out to play again 10 minutes later it was a case of tip-toeing round an extremely wet track in a busy closing segment of the session, the times rolling over in the 1:52 zone at first until Rossi’s team-mate Jorge Lorenzo broke through into the 1:48 bracket.

Stoner and Honda’s Andrea Dovizioso then took them into the 1:47’s while Rossi and Australia’s Chris Vermeulen were lapping at 286 and 287 km/h respectively despite the conditions.

Rossi and Stoner posted astonishing times and top speeds in the wet as the session came to a thrilling end, the Australian emerging on top in the difficult conditions as well with a 1:40.049 and a speed into Turn 1 of 310.5 km/h.

Lorenzo, working hard to make up for time lost when he stepped off the Yamaha in Friday’s free practice, put in the most laps with a total of 27 but still ended the session half a second off his team-mate’s best mark and eight-tenths adrift of Stoner’s session-leading time.

The almost annual encounter with Island wildlife occurred too, this time when Marco Melandri hit a seabird as his Honda fired down the Gardner Straight, the Italian copping nothing worse than a knock on his left hand.