One hour after the circuit opened, a heavy shower brought proceedings to an abrupt halt. With no sun to dry the floodlit surface, wet patches remained on parts of the track until the end of the test at six hours later.
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As a result, reigning world champion Valentino Rossi completed only one lap as did team-mate Jorge Lorenzo, while Casey Stoner, Dani Pedrosa and Loris Capirossi never left the pits.
Nicky Hayden completed a total of 31 laps, including the fastest of the day. As usual the American was prepared to make the best of the conditions, testing some electronic updates and a new fork.
“I haven’t seen rain in Qatar in all my life and I never thought I would! But today we’d barely got the bike on track and it started to come down,” said the former World Champion. “We had to spend a long time in the garage because even though a part of the track had dried out there was a section that stayed damp for a while. The track conditions were tricky and there wasn’t much feedback, which meant we couldn’t do the work we had planned. We’ve got a few different things to try so hopefully the weather is better tomorrow so we can get some work done.”
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