Stoner dominates Friday practice

Ducati rider Stoner has won the last three Qatar Grands Prix and was quickest in the final pre-season test of the winter at the track last month.

He only allowed arch-rival Valentino Rossi (Yamaha) a brief moment of glory at the start of this evening's session, and then beat Rossi's early benchmark by 0.6 seconds 12 minutes into practice.

That put the top two 2s clear of their rivals at the time, and Stoner then went faster still on his next run - getting down to 1m55.500s and pulling 0.9s ahead of even Rossi.

While Stoner came close to beating his benchmark several times on subsequent outings, Rossi kept chipping away by a few fractions of a second but could only get within half a second of the Ducati.

Then in the final two minutes the world champion lost his second place too, deposed by his team-mate Jorge Lorenzo, who snuck ahead by just 0.002s. The Spaniard then fell on his next lap, but immediately got up and appeared to have suffered no further damage to his injured right hand.

Honda's lead rider Andrea Dovizioso won a late battle for fourth with Nicky Hayden, who surged to fifth on the second Ducati, picking up huge amounts of speed late in the session having earlier been near the foot of the times. Dovizioso's team-mate Dani Pedrosa was only 11th, losing several places amid a late run of rapid laps from his rivals, as his problems from testing continued.

Superbike world champion Ben Spies began his first full season of MotoGP with a strong sixth for Tech 3 Yamaha, ahead of top 250cc graduate Alvaro Bautista in seventh. His Suzuki team-mate Loris Capirossi was 13th after suffering a low-side under braking 20 minutes from the end. The veteran Italian was unhurt.

Randy de Puniet was third for a while for LCR Honda and eventually ended up eighth, ahead of satellite Ducati pairing Mika Kallio (Pramac) and Hector Barbera (Aspar).

Pos  Rider             Team               Time       Gap
 1.  Casey Stoner      Ducati             1m55.500s
 2.  Jorge Lorenzo     Yamaha             1m56.026s  + 0.526s
 3.  Valentino Rossi   Yamaha             1m56.028s  + 0.528s
 4.  Andrea Dovizioso  Honda              1m56.698s  + 1.198s
 5.  Nicky Hayden      Ducati             1m56.793s  + 1.293s
 6.  Ben Spies         Tech 3 Yamaha      1m56.818s  + 1.318s
 7.  Alvaro Bautista   Suzuki             1m56.998s  + 1.498s
 8.  Randy de Puniet   LCR Honda          1m57.031s  + 1.531s
 9.  Mika Kallio       Pramac Ducati      1m57.059s  + 1.559s
10.  Hector Barbera    Aspar Ducati       1m57.105s  + 1.605s
11.  Dani Pedrosa      Honda              1m57.133s  + 1.633s
12.  Colin Edwards     Tech 3 Yamaha      1m57.167s  + 1.667s
13.  Loris Capirossi   Suzuki             1m57.363s  + 1.863s
14.  Marco Simoncelli  Gresini Honda      1m57.535s  + 2.035s
15.  Aleix Espargaro   Pramac Ducati      1m57.605s  + 2.105s
16.  Marco Melandri    Gresini Honda      1m58.035s  + 2.535s
17.  Hiroshi Aoyama    Interwetten Honda  1m58.082s  + 2.582s