Valentino Rossi once called the current crop of MotoGP riders the “traction control generation” but he widely misinterpreted Casey Stoner use of electronic aids.
The reigning World Champion in tonight’s third and final free practice in Qatar may have ended up third on the charts, but he was hampered by traffic on his final run and just his T1 was almost as fast as Lorenzo’s only Stoner was on hard and used tires.
“Today has been pretty good for us in general, we has some issues in the first two sessions but we’ve fixed them slightly in last one which is definitely positive.
We’ve been able to turn down the electronics a lot more and now I have more feeling and connection with the rear tyre which gave me a lot more confidence.
This allowed me to do some good lap times with some pretty old tyres.
A few people got in our way throughout the session so we were unable to show what we were really capable of, but we know how we feel and we’re confident for qualifying tomorrow,” commented Stoner who strangely enough didn’t throw a hissy fit at Bautista for holding him up and just said that it was strange that a rider with Bautista’s experience could still continue making the same mistakes.
Dani Pedrosa had a very rough night, an unexpected crash in FP2 mined some of his confidence, but fortunately he wasn’t injured, while he had electronics issues in FP3 that left him down in 5th and 0.
812s from his team mate.
“The day wasn’t as good for us as we would have liked.
I had some problems with the electronics and I couldn’t ride at 100%, especially in the exits of the corners where we have more issues.
Let’s hope the mechanics can find a solution and we can have a good qualifying session tomorrow.
The crash in the first session was totally unexpected; it was on my first lap of the second exit and I was not pushing at all.
But I escaped unhurt and it’s ok.
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