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Casey Stoner 2010 Ducati
Diecast model of the 2010 Ducati Desmosedici GP10 of Casey Stoner. This 1:10 model is a valuable piece of MotoGP history, being the bike Stoner last ridden before his switch to Honda.
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2008-01-30 Phillip Island test day 1 rider claims and times
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 MotoGP winter testing continued at the Phillip Island circuit in Australia today, the opening day of a three-day session. In fine, sunny weather, with ambient temperatures just above 20 degrees and track temperature at 40 degrees, the riders and teams continued preparations for 2008 MotoGP season. Only riders to miss this test were Rossi and Lorenzo from Fiat Yamaha - opting for Sepang next week, and Dani Pedrosa, who is recovering from injuries. Of course, there was no sign from Team KR. Colin Edwards continued strong pre-season performance by setting fastest time of the day on qualifying tyre. Casey Stoner was second fastest on race tyre, not so much behind Edwards, but quite far from Alex De Angelis, rookie who set third time in hist first appearance aboard MotoGP machine in Australian track. Read rider claims after first day at Phillip Island.
Colin Edwards - 1st - 1:29.566, 77 laps
It was a good day. I started with the same setting I finished in Malaysia and played around with that for the day. The bike feels good at this track compared to what I raced with a few months ago. Yamaha has been working hard and the new parts are definitely a step in the right direction, particularly with the electronics, which has helped on corner entry and exit. With a qualifying tyre in Malaysia my time didn’t get any better. I had a couple of handling issues with the qualifier in Sepang so once I got a good pace going I chucked a couple of qualifiers in. It is the first day but you never know what the weather is going to do down here, and it could be raining tomorrow. We wanted to make sure with the adjustments we were going to make for the qualifier that it was the right way. In Sepang I had too much weight on the rear. The rear was taking over and running me wide and we made a change to get more weight on the front and get it to turn a bit better. It seemed fine and I’m happy with the lap time.
Casey Stoner - 2nd - 1:30.178, 73 laps
Everything went really well today, the feeling with the bike was perfect almost straight away. The new Bridgestones, which had already given us positive feedback at Sepang, also worked perfectly here at Phillip Island - one of them in particular improves the bike a lot in the exit of the corners, especially in the final section of the track. We've also taken a step forward with some small changes to the front, which have made the bike more stable and improved grip to the point where my best time came without pushing, on a tyre that already had 17 laps on it. I'm also really happy with the latest specs of the engine and the way it is responding under acceleration coming out of the corners. The weather was basically perfect all day apart from when the wind picked up a little in the afternoon but the smaller fairing, which we used for the race here in October, meant that it wasn't a problem. Towards the end of the day my shoulder was a little sore because this is such a physical track, with a lot of fast corners, but it is still better than it was in Malaysia.
Alex De Angelis - 3rd - 1:30.688, 70 laps:
I have recovered perfectly, my right arm doesn’t hurt anymore and this has helped me a lot. I immediately found a good feeling with the bike on this track, which is one of my favourites, and the track conditions today were almost perfect! I could lap with a good pace from the first laps. We have worked on geometry and my feeling has improved a lot during the day. Every test is like a new adventure for me, I have a good relationship with my team and I like the RC212V a lot. Today we tested only with race tyres and I’m very satisfied.
Andrea Dovizioso - 4th - 1:30.70, 80 laps
I’m very satisfied with today’s progress. This was a very positive day from the technical point of view and also from the riding point of view. I arrived in Phillip Island a little bit apprehensive as in 250 and 125s I never found myself comfortable at this track and I never enjoyed it too much. With the 800 it’s fantastic! I love to go around the track and it’s very good going into those fast, long corners getting the bike sliding a lot, too!
I still have some small problems in braking at the rear, which is affecting the lap time a little. The whole thing doesn’t bother me too much and we will find a solution. I’m adapting my riding position on the bike, but I would like to move the footpegs a little to the rear, so we shall change this. Today I concentrated very hard on the track to give a good performance and I’m happy that I have done this. The next two days will be full of intense and very hard work. The team and me will work hard with Michelin and try and find the optimum setting for the chassis.
James Toseland - 5th - 1:30.864, 81 laps
The first few laps I was able to hit the exact same six inches of track and I got up to speed much quicker than I did in Sepang and Jerez. It was nice to be at the sharp end of the times and I didn’t realise but track knowledge is even more important with these bikes to help things come together. When you can hit the same spot lap after lap without thinking about it then you can really concentrate on the bike set-up and that makes a big difference to help gradually improve. I’ve got a slight problem with entry to the fast corners. Just as I tip in I get a bit of chatter from the front. I’m losing quite a lot of time because of that problem because they are in such fast parts of the track. I could make up quite a lot of time if it wasn’t for that. I’ll try a new setting tomorrow morning to try and help before I do a race simulation. But it’s nice to be doing decent lap times with a few problems. And I actually passed somebody on the brakes for the first time ever in MotoGP. I passed Chris Vermeulen going into the first corner turn which I was pretty proud of.
Marco Melandri - 6th - 1:30.869, 99 laps
I'm really happy today because I finally feel as though I'm riding the bike more or less as I should. We knew that Phillip Island would be better for us and that's proved to be the case. The feeling was good from the first lap, thanks also to the things we learnt in the last test. At Sepang I probably changed the balance of the bike too much, trying to make it more similar to what I have ridden in the past, whereas here we've just tried to find a good base set-up, which has made it more manageable in the corners and less nervous. I am happy even though we're still not at 100%. We've actually got plans to try something new with the weight distribution tomorrow and we want to continue working on the electronics to try and improve the power delivery even more, then we can start tyre testing. In any case we've made a great start here.
Shinya Nakano - 7th - 1:31.111, 91 laps:
We worked hard to solve the problems we had at Sepang, in particular the chatter. We tested a modified fork and we succeeded to minimize the problem. I feel very well – fit and motivated – and I did my best time of the day at the end of the afternoon when track conditions were not ideal, which means that I'm feeling very good.
Nicky Hayden - 8th - 1:31.226, 107 laps:
This is a completely different track to Sepang so we needed to reconfirm what we learned last week. That’s been the plan today, so we’ve been using reference tyres, we’ve not been doing any tyre testing so far, mainly just checking settings. This morning we checked both engines because the team needs data with the pneumatic valve engine too. The track seems to be in great shape and the weather’s good, so we’ve gotten a lot done.
With Dani not here I’m just focusing on my own thing, we’re completely different riders, so I’ve got to keep working on my own stuff. The big difference right now is that I’ve got more engineers working with me, because usually they have to split their time and focus on the both of us. I’m pretty lucky right now to have all the engineers focusing on me.
So far preseason is going well for us but nothing really matters till we get to that first race. I’m just working as hard as I can with the team so I can make the most of the opportunities and hopefully when we get to that race we’ll be ready to make some noise. Michelin is definitely working hard and we’ve seen some progress. Right now we’re positive.
Loris Capirossi - 9th - 1:31.274, 82 laps
Today has been quite a tough day, but we have certainly made advances. We set out to get a good base setting for the bike and we have improved it over the day, but we still have quite a way to go. We have lots of stuff to test on the bike and we started to do that today but we still have a lot of work to do over the next two days. My crew worked really hard today and because of them we have made a lot of progress, the bike is improving all the time, but as I have said before this is a difficult track for the Suzuki so we have lots to do!
Chris Vermeulen - 10th - 1:31.317, 99 laps
It’s good to be back in Australia to test again, although we could do with it being a bit warmer. I got a lot of laps in today as we need to get through as much work as possible here this week. The Factory has certainly acted on the information Loris and I gave them towards the end of last year, but before we can thoroughly test the new parts we need to get the settings right, and like Loris I spent a large part of today sorting those out. I know there is more to come over the week and I hope we will improve dramatically on those times and positions.
Randy De Puniet - 11th - 1:31.436s, 103 laps:
When I went out this morning, after three laps only, I had the wrong feeling with the front, so we decided to work on suspension setting throughout the day. We focused our work on the front fork setting and race tyre testing, aiming to find a better feeling for this track. We tested many things and I did 103 laps. At the end of the day the feeling was much better and we’ve found the right way to proceed with our set-up work tomorrow.
John Hopkins - 12th - 1:31.623, 88 laps:
Basically we've been refining the set-up some more, and working to get the gearbox up to speed, but I also had some problems with chatter early on. We managed to make some improvements in the afternoon, but we've got more things we want to try tomorrow that we think will help dial out the problem. We've got a pretty heavy tyre test scheduled with Bridgestone for tomorrow, so that's where out focus will be, but I think that if we can improve the chatter situation at the same time, then we'll see the lap times start coming down.
Anthony West - 13th - 1:31.786, 72 laps:
Today's been all about continuing the work on the base set-up of the bike that we started last week in Sepang. We've made quite a few changes to the settings, basically to give us a better understanding of how the bike reacts to these changes at this circuit compared to Sepang. I also tested with some different front forks on the bike, with positive results, and we managed to confirm the profile choice for the front tyre that we tested in Malaysia. Towards the end of the afternoon we managed to make some improvements to the bike, which I hope will allow me to finish a bit further up the timesheet tomorrow.
Sylvain Guintoli – 14th - 1:32.484, 68 laps
Today was pretty good, also thanks to the weather conditions. As the days go on, I feel more comfortable on the bike, maintaining a good rhythm. Throughout the morning we have worked on the front part of the bike trying different tyre solutions. Physically I feel really good, I am happy and ready for the next two days of work.
Toni Elias – 15th - 1:32.573, 90 laps
Phillip Island is surely one of the most difficult tracks, but at the same time really fascinating. Today it has been a hard day, we managed to complete many laps which is really positive for us. We concentrated on working on the chassis and suspensions, trying different solutions to find the best approach to follow. I am sure that in the next two days we will improve.
Day 1 test times - Phillip Island:
1. Edwards Yamaha Tech3 1'29.566 (77)
2. Stoner Ducati Marlboro 1'30.178 (73)
3. De Angelis Honda Gresini 1'30.688 (70)
4. Dovizioso JiR Team Scot 1'30.701 (79)
5. Toseland Yamaha Tech3 1'30.864 (81)
6. Melandri Ducati Marlboro 1'30.869 (99)
7. Nakano Honda Gresini 1'31.111 (91)
8. Hayden Repsol Honda 1'31.226 (107)
9. Capirossi Rizla Suzuki 1'31.274 (82)
10. Vermeulen Rizla Suzuki 1'31.317 (99)
11. De Puniet Honda LCR 1'31.436 (103)
12. Hopkins Kawasaki Racing 1'31.623 (88)
13. West Kawasaki Racing 1'31.786 (72)
14. Guintoli Alice Team 1'32.484 (68)
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