‘Cheeky’ Casey Stoner boosted by Jerez speed

Casey Stoner denied his late attack to reach the summit of the timesheets in yesterday’s Jerez test was a ploy to score one last psychological blow before he commences the defence of his MotoGP world title in Qatar next month.

Only a few minutes of the pre-season campaign remained when Stoner powered his Repsol Honda RC213V to the top of the timesheets with a quickest pace of 1.38.780.

That denied Jorge Lorenzo, who had led the rankings for almost the entire day, by 0.173s.

But the Aussie said he hadn’t waited until the final moments to edge ahead of his factory Yamaha rival and gain a small psychological edge heading to the first race in Doha on April 8.

“I just wanted to be cheeky,“ smiled Stoner, who has finished fastest in all three pre-season tests in 2012.

“At Sepang you do it at the start of the day because the conditions are better at that time. But here you wait until the end of the day. We did all our testing during the day and I was a little bit tired, so physically I would have been better at the start of the day.

“Everybody did their times during the day and there is no doubt everybody went out there to put times in. I was a little worried three-quarters of way through the day when we were testing a lot of things but not trying for a lap time.

“Then the wind picked and the track became a little difficult to ride and I wasn’t sure if I could improve. But it felt good in the end and everything was working pretty well and it was more or less a qualifying session at the end there.

“I was quite fast all day with used tyres and we made another step today to make the bike work even better. We had tyres left and we were doing long runs on every tyre we had, more or less race distance on each tyre, so at the end of the day we had a couple spare and decided to go and put it on top of the list.

“I’m happy because this is not normally a good track for me, so to leave fastest gives me a lot of confidence for the year.”

For seven pages of news and views from the Jerez test, see the March 28 issue of Motor Cycle News.