Second placed Casey Stoner has revealed that he was unhappy with today’s first practice session.
After struggling for grip throughout the session the Ducati rider blamed the weather and track conditions “I'm not that happy with today's session to be honest. The track conditions weren't good at all and we struggled for traction, which is usually a strong point of our bike. We tried a few different settings, one of which gave us better rear grip but compensated in turning, which was otherwise really good,” said Stoner.
“The front end was quite consistent throughout so it's just a case of working on the rear tomorrow and hoping that the track conditions improve so that we can find where the limits are. The weather is always a worry here and there was a point in the session this afternoon where it began to spot with rain just as I was heading into turn one and I came back in.
“I probably had my best setting at that point so the lap time could have been better but I think it has been a difficult day for everybody so we're not too concerned.”
Team-mate Nicky Hayden finished the session down in eleventh place 1.739 seconds off the pace.
“We got a bit of sunshine today so the track temperatures came up a little but there were a few spots of rain out there during the session and that didn't help. I came out of the gate pretty fast but found it difficult to improve from there and I'm not really happy to be this far off the pace. In the past it has taken me a while to get up to speed here, even when I have had good results, so I'm not too worried but we definitely need to get the bike working better – especially over the bumps – and find some more edge grip. Hopefully we can take a big step tomorrow.”
Photo credit: Ducati Corse
