It shouldn’t surprise anyone that’s been visiting A&R for the past few days when you read that Casey Stoner has won the pole position for the Qatar GP tomorrow. The Australian has been dominating the week and holds nearly half a second over second place rider, Valentino Rossi, who with Stoner, Lorenzo, and Dovizioso are the only riders to break into the 1:55’s this week.
Casey Stoner continues to be the man to beat in Qatar this weekend, but the rest of the MotoGP field is getting wise, and starting to encrouch on the Australian’s lap times in Free Practice 2.
The return of MotoGP racing is just a few days away in Qatar right now, and Casey Stoner has proven himself the man to beat. Stoner was fast from the moment he rolled out onto the track, setting the 1’57 mark within 10 minutes of the free practice, a time he would reduce by a further 0.8 seconds towards the end of the session. Only two other men were able to break in’ the :57’s, Valentino Rossi and Colin Edwards. It took Rossi quite some time to catch the Australian, but he was eventually able to close the gap to Stoner by 0.4 seconds. Colin Edwards, the third fastest man in the opening session of the 2009 season finished 0.7 seconds off of Stoner. Outside of that group, Jorge Lorenzo made it 3 Yamaha’s in the top 4, but was still 1.2 seconds behind the time to beat.
As the MotoGP Official Night Test came to a conclusion at midnight in Qatar on Tuesday, it was Casey Stoner who sat proudly at the head of the time sheet. This was the last day for the MotoGP field to get practice in the desert night before the season starts, and is the second of three tests planned for the 2009 season. The next outing for the MotoGP riders is the Official MotoGP Test at the Jerez circuit in southern Spain which takes place on 28th & 29th March. MotoGP will then return to Qatar for the first Grand Prix of the year on 10th-12th April.
After the torrential rain on Sunday evening, riders were not taking any chances with cool temperatures and a dirty track surface from high winds earlier last night. Without little surprise, lap times were well off record pace, and most riders were not taking any extra chances after seeing Chris Vermeulen, Dani Pedrosa and Mikka Kallio all crash out, and the track red flagged twice. Despite the carnage, Casey Stoner found himself on the top of the stack as the fastest rider of the day in the second round of testing at Qatar.
After seeing Ducati’s photo shoot of the new GP9 with Casey Stoner and Nicky Hayden, we couldn’t help but make the association.
The 2009 season has started. Well…sort of. The champagne only stopped flowing moments ago for Valentino Rossi, but work for the 2009 season waits for no man. With more rider and team shakeups than the Sunday morning Times word search, the 2009 MotoGP teams (sans Tech3) have begun shaking out their new bikes, and for some, their new riders.
Read more after the jump.
Well that’s it folks, the MotoGP season is over. Not to spoil it, but Randy de Puniet was not the come-from-behind points winner for the rider’s cup. Click on the jump to see every dirty spoiler.