Stoner tops Brno test day

The Ducati rider's best lap of the day was nearly a second quicker than the best lap of the race weekend. But he says the didn't try many new parts on the bike and is confident of his pace for the rest of the season.

"It's been a really positive day," said Stoner. "We didn't have too much to test, a couple of new tyres and that's about it, but we managed to find a new setting to improve and I dropped by lap times by almost a second, and that's really positive.

"Unfortunately my physical condition on Friday and the rain on Saturday meant we didn't head into the race in the best possible shape, but I'm happy because the things we've improved today will be useful for the upcoming races."

Rossi was second fastest but wasn't concerned with the gap to Stoner because he was concentrating on testing a wide variety of front and rear Bridgestone tyres in the morning, before moving on to testing his Yamaha's electronics in the afternoon.

"It was a good day of testing today after a great day of racing yesterday," said Rossi. "We have collected a lot of information which will help us for the rest of the season.

"We will continue with the electronics and mapping tomorrow because we haven't finished the whole programme, and we also have some general set-up work to do, then we will leave here in good shape for the final push."

Fellow Bridgestone riders Toni Elias, Shinya Nakano, and Chris Vermeulen finished the day's running third, fourth, and fifth fastest respectively for Ducati, Honda, and Suzuki, ahead of Colin Edwards, who was first of the Michelin runners on his Tech 3 Yamaha in sixth.

Race winners from earlier this season, Jorge Lorenzo and Dani Pedrosa, sampled a range of Michelin tyres in the hope of closing the gap to Bridgestone and regaining their early season form.

Lorenzo was encouraged by some of the work, saying: "Today we concentrated on front tyres and we found some improvement with regards to the wear of the tyre, which was one of the biggest problems during the weekend, but there is still a lot of work to do."

But Pedrosa was less enthusiastic about the test, which followed what he called the worst race of his career, and he did not ride in the afternoon session.

"We tried some different front tyres but we finished after some laps because we couldn't find any improvement," he said. "We tested the tyres with my current race bike because there was no point using the machine with the pneumatic-valve engine because the tyres weren't working well enough."

Honda test rider Tadayuki Okada did use the pneumatic-valve engine, though, and says the development of the bike is is progressing nicely.

"Today we tested some new steps in development concerning both engine and electronics," he said. "In Japan we are working on the development of both the spring-valve engine and the pneumatic-valve engine, and since my last appearance at the Italian GP I can say that the bike with pneumatic-valve engine has improved a lot.

"I think that the bike has reached a satisfactory level of development and I hope that Dani will be able to test it soon."

Pos Rider               Bike            Time
 1. Casey Stoner        Ducati      1:56.261
 2. Valentino Rossi     Yamaha      1:57.332
 3. Toni Elias          Ducati      1:57.457
 4. Shinya Nakano       Honda       1:57.652
 5. Chris Vermeulen     Suzuki      1:57.742
 6. Colin Edwards       Yamaha      1:57.756
 7. Alex de Angelis     Honda       1:57.826
 8. Sylvain Guintoli    Ducati      1:57.859
 9. Jorge Lorenzo       Yamaha      1:57.979
10. Loris Capirossi     Suzuki      1:58.177
11. Niccolo Canepa      Ducati      1:58.204
12. Marco Melandri      Ducati      1:58.325
13. Randy De Puniet     Honda       1:58.568
14. Dani Pedrosa        Honda       1:59.067
15. Olivier Jacque      Kawasaki    1:59.130
16. Andrea Dovizioso    Honda       1:59.130
17. James Toseland      Yamaha      1:59.228
18. John Hopkins        Kawasaki    2:00.414
19. Tadyuki Okada       Honda       2:00.735