Casey Stoner super-fast in Sepang

Casey Stoner was the star of the show again in Sepang today as Honda’s sensational start to the 2011 MotoGP world championship campaign picked up further momentum at the Sepang circuit.

The Aussie led home a clean sweep of the top three places by the Repsol Honda squad with Stoner’s best time of 2.00.171 on his last lap edging out team-mate Dani Pedrosa by just 0.058s.

But the 2007 world champion hinted he might have been able to lap even faster round the long and technical Malaysian venue having struggled to get a positive feeling out of a new set of Ohlins 48mm front forks.

Former factory Ducati rider Stoner, who was also quickest on the opening day, clocked his best time on his final lap just seconds before the track closed at 6pm.

But while content to have continued his impressive transition to the factory Honda RC212V machine, Stoner couldn’t conceal his disappointment at finding an immediate benefit with the new front fork.

Stoner’s 2010 was dominated by a series of front-end crashes that wrecked his world title hopes and during last season he raced with three different front fork combinations as he grappled with a confidence crisis in the front-end of Ducati’s GP10.

The 24-year-old told MCN tonight: “We tested the  2011 forks but a good 60 per cent of the day was pretty useless for us. We tried a lot of configurations with the 2011 fork and shock.

“We found quite a lot more chattering with it so we couldn’t really get on with it that well. That was a bit disappointing because yesterday we were working on making the bike better from what we had, and just comparing the two chassis.

“Today we stayed 90 per cent of the time on one bike, just trying different fork configurations and changing geometry a bit to try and get the bike to work with the new forks but we never really found something that felt good.

“I was a little disappointed with spending all that time doing that but is necessary to do all that before the start of the season. We just seem to lack that last bit of feeling that I have with the other fork.

“They have been fantastic and I’ve had no complaints. But the 2011 forks have a bit more movement in the front and I don’t feel 100 cent confident with them. We tried some different spring rates but couldn’t get the bike to feel any better.”

Despite spending the majority of the second day riding with a modified 2011 RC212V frame with more flex, Stoner said he was leaning more to the standard version as he comes closer to finalising the package he will start the new season on in Qatar on March 20.

He added: “My quickest lap time on the hard tyre was with the standard frame. We’re slowly starting to lean more towards the standard frame but tomorrow will give us more confirmation.”