Casey Stoner: I could have gone faster!

Casey Stoner extended his golden run of form on board Honda’s 2011 factory Honda RC212V today, the Aussie completing his domination of the Sepang MotoGP test in stunning fashion.

The track had barely been open for 15 minutes this morning when Stoner clocked a 1.59.968 on his first flying lap.

Taking full advantage of the more favourable cool conditions just after 10am, Stoner’s next lap was a brilliant 1.59.803, which was never bettered for the remainder of the test.

Stoner’s time was good enough to beat Repsol Honda team-mate Dani Pedrosa by 0.138s as he set the pace on each day in Malaysia.

Stoner’s seamless switch to the Honda V4 machine after four years at Ducati also saw him complete an ominous distance run of 16-laps in which he demonstrated a fast and consistent pace.

His best time in the long run was a 2.00.887, beating the best time in last October’s Sepang MotoGP race by more than 1.3s as Honda dominated once again.

Stoner might have claimed the fastest time on each day, but he was being hotly pursued by Pedrosa and Italian duo Marco Simoncelli and Andrea Dovizioso.

Simoncelli was the only other rider apart from Pedrosa to lap within 0.5s of 2007 world champion Stoner, who reckons he could have gone faster than his 1.59.803.

He told MCN: “We knew we could get into the 59s but I also knew we had to do a long run today, so I didn’t want to wait until the end of the day when it could have rained.

“I never feel quite so comfortable in the morning and I ran wide a couple of times because I didn’t want to crash and we were still able to do those times.

“I’m happy to get into the 59s and I think with an ideal lap you could do a low 59 because conditions were really good.”

Another big plus for Stoner was he finally reached a decision on which chassis he will begin the new season on in Qatar next month this afternoon after pain-staking analysis.

He’s been torn between using a standard 2011 frame he first evaluated in Valencia back in November and a more flexible option modified for him to assess at the opening Sepang test earlier this month.

He said: “I’ve read that people think myself and Dani are trying the 2010 and 2011 chassis but both of my chassis are 2011. One is a standard and one is a modified 2011 chassis and we’ve gone with the standard one.

“It is slightly stiffer but it feels a bit more consistent. It surprises us because in conditions we think it shouldn’t work it does and we’ve been able to adapt it a little bit to make it similar to the other one.”