Dani Pedrosa was on course to claim the spoils in FP3 for the season opener in Qatar, but it was teammate Casey Stoner who stole the show yet again by claiming 1st place on the timesheets by 0.158s. The top three showed that Honda are well on their way to dominance this weekend, as Andrea Dovizioso claimed 3rd spot, 0.705s behind Stoner.
The factory Yamaha team improved to their Thursday pace again as Jorge Lorenzo managed to finally get ahead of Ben Spies, with Hector Barbera back in impressive form, placing in 6th, and as the top placed Ducati followed by Colin Edwards, who managed to get his Monster Yamaha Tech3 into the top 10 again in 7th place.
Valentino Rossi‘s woes continue as he placed in 8th place, but this was an awful lot better than teammate Nicky Hayden. The American had a nightmare of a session as he finished way down in 14th place. To put into perspective just how off the pace Hayden was, the pair of Pramac Ducati’s finished the session in 9th and 10th, with Randy De Puniet edging out Loris Capirossi.
Cal Cructhlow continued to impress on his Monster Yamaha Tech3 by finishing in 11th, only just missing out on another top ten finish. He was followed by the pair of San Carlo Honda Gresini machines, with Hiroshi Aoyama out pacing Marco Simoncelli, who will be hoping for a better performance in qualifying tomorrow, as he could be in with a shout of a podium finish.
Karel Abraham didn’t play with Valentino Rossi in this session, he finished in 15th on the Cardion AB Motoracing machine, and Toni Elias still propped up the timesheet on the LCR Honda in 17th.
Rizla Suzuki will not be present during the rest of the weekend due to Ãlvaro Bautista suffering from a broken leg after a highspeed high side 10 minutes from the end of the session.
