Casey Stoner unsure of best chassis choice

Casey Stoner might have dominated the opening day timesheets at the second Sepang test in Malaysia today, but it wasn’t all plain sailing for the Repsol Honda star.

The 2007 world champion is still torn between which RC212V chassis he will start the new campaign on in Qatar next month having spent today further evaluating a standard 2011 frame and one modified at his request with more flex.

The Aussie clocked the best time of 2.00.987 in the final hour of today’s session to finish 0.373s clear of factory Honda team-mate Dani Pedrosa as temperatures nudged a searing 40 degrees.

But Stoner told MCN in Malaysia tonight he is still agonising over which chassis to start the season on as he looks to make a winning start for Honda in Doha on March 20.

Stoner, who hasn’t yet finished outside the top three in a test for HRC, said: “We’re still comparing chassis and trying to get an understanding between the two. They have strong and weak points between them and there’s no way to pick between them. They run the exact same lap times on the exact same set of tyres and it’s a little frustrating that we can’t choose one or the other, but it’s not our biggest problem at the moment. No matter what sort of setting we throw at them we seem to be able to run similar lap times. We tried changing my body position a little today and that helped on one of the chassis but we’ve got some more experimenting to do tomorrow.”

Stoner though said he wouldn’t be hurried into a decision as he prepares to further assess both chassis again tomorrow.

He added: “I want to choose as soon as possible but if we really can’t find a stronger point with one or the other then we’ll wait until the last moment to be sure. It is not our biggest problem and if we have to toss a coin the bike will work better at one track with one chassis and maybe a different one at another. There’ll be tracks where they will be both be strong, so it just trying to figure out if one chassis can be modified to ride like the other one.”

Could HRC build another new frame incorporating the positive characteristics of both chassis?

That was an avenue explored by Stoner but he told MCN: “They (HRC engineers) kind of laughed at that. That’s what I asked for but if we can make one of the chassis work similar to the other one, then that’s what we’ll go for.”