Valentino Rossi, looking to end his longest losing streak in the premier-class, was instantly on the pace at Sepang in Malaysia on Friday.
Riding at a circuit where he had dominated in pre-season testing, the Fiat Yamaha rider took over at the top from Ducati’s Casey Stoner shortly after the Australian fell and - barring a brief interruption by Andrea Dovizioso - remained fastest for the rest of the hour.
Rossi finished the session 0.109sec in front of the Repsol Honda rider. The Italian’s team-mate and title leader Jorge Lorenzo, with whom Rossi battled forcefully for third last weekend in Japan, was in third place (+0.174sec).
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MotoGP: Valentino Rossi Fastest in First Practice at Sepang
“It’s been another good start for us here and we found a good setting straight away,” said Rossi. “I am feeling very comfortable on the bike and so far my shoulder is okay here. Yahoo! Eurosport UK
“The track is quite dirty, but that will get better and I love riding at this track, it’s one of my favorites and I am always happy to be on the bike here. We are confident that we will be able to make some more improvements tomorrow and be in good shape to try for the front row tomorrow afternoon.”
Ducati Marlboro’s Casey Stoner was nearly half a second off Rossi’s pace. The Australian, who was riding a two race winning streak into Sepang, had a return to his front end problems. Stoner crashed ten minutes into the session when he lost the front in turn four, though the damage was minimal. Teammate Nicky Hayden had an equally dispiriting day. Hayden finished 15th out of 16th, though only .787 sec. slower than Stoner. And Hayden was only 1.223 secs. slower than Rossi.
“I’m not really happy with the way things went today,” Stoner said. “We had a small crash at the beginning of the session, so I had to switch bikes and do a lot of work to get it feeling better. Every time I went out there was some small problem and we seemed to take a while to find a reasonable setting. By the end I had established a good feeling and I wanted to make a better lap time on the second lap of my final run but I ran wide in turn one and that was that. We’ll take this data and try to improve the bike for tomorrow. We seem to be struggling most of all with the rear, just like at Motegi, but once we solve that I’m sure we’ll see major improvements with the rest of the bike.” Said Hayden, “We have picked up where we left off in Japan, which is not a good thing. We struggled a lot, right from the beginning, over the bumps mainly. I have a lot of front chatter, we got rear chatter too, and I cannot carry any good corner speed. We’re 1.2 seconds off the top, which may not seem that much, but the reality is that it is a lot when the field is as tight as it is right now. That kind of gap is pretty much going to send you to the back. We definitely need to do something for tomorrow because today was not good.” Cycle News
Pos. Num. Rider Team Time 1 46 Valentino ROSSI Fiat Yamaha Team 2'02.724 2 4 Andrea DOVIZIOSO Repsol Honda Team 2'02.833 3 99 Jorge LORENZO Fiat Yamaha Team 2'02.898 4 27 Casey STONER Ducati Team 2'03.160 5 19 Alvaro BAUTISTA Rizla Suzuki MotoGP 2'03.338 6 5 Colin EDWARDS Monster Yamaha Tech 3 2'03.393 7 33 Marco MELANDRI San Carlo Honda Gresini 2'03.438 8 41 Aleix ESPARGARO Pramac Racing Team 2'03.471 9 11 Ben SPIES Monster Yamaha Tech 3 2'03.477 10 14 Randy DE PUNIET LCR Honda MotoGP 2'03.539 11 58 Marco SIMONCELLI San Carlo Honda Gresini 2'03.680 12 65 Loris CAPIROSSI Rizla Suzuki MotoGP 2'03.717 13 40 Hector BARBERA Paginas Amarillas Aspar 2'03.760 14 7 Hiroshi AOYAMA Interwetten Honda MotoGP 2'03.769 15 69 Nicky HAYDEN Ducati Team 2'03.947 16 36 Mika KALLIO Pramac Racing Team 2'04.023
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