Casey Stoner vs Jorge Lorenzo, Honda vs Yamaha and in this evening’s second free practice at Qatar, seemed the same old, same old only faster than yesterday.
Jorge Lorenzo led most of the practice session and was the first rider to dip under the 1.
57 mark and later posted a best lap of 1.
56.
174, but along came Casey Stoner on his third to last lap who clocked a 1.
566.
960 that put him at the top of the timesheets and pushing back three Yamaha riders that were at the top of the charts at that moment.
Stoner’s best FP2 lap is still a little more than eighth tenths of second from his own 2008 race record lap.
There were two interesting surprises during the session and both belonged to satellite riders.
The first was Andrea Dovizioso who grabbed third with Yamaha Tech3 (which is one step behind the factory machines and has slightly different electronics) shaving off almost a second from yesterday and finished ahead of Yamaha’s Ben Spies, and the second was Hector Barbera on the Pramac Ducati GP12 Valencia version (top speed 339 km/h) who was not only a mere 0.
007s from the Yamaha rider but he was also faster that Ducati factory riders Nicky Hayden and Valentino Rossi and bettered his FP2 lap time by almost 1.
3 seconds.
Dani Pedrosa had an extremely trying session until he finished 6th.
The Repsol Honda rider has technical issues on his RC213V and once they were solved returned to track only to crash out almost immediately bruising his left leg.
Nicky Hayden took seventh but his improvement was only two tenths of second, while Cal Crutchlow finished in 8th.
An impressive Stefan Bradl was ninth and he was almost 1.
8 seconds quicker than in FP1, while Valentino Rossi closed out the top ten, but he was still a massive 1.
384 adrift from Stoner, only fellow Ducati rider Karel Abraham on the satellite version of the Italian machine was slower than he was.
The top CRT rider was Forward Racing’s Colin Edwards, who finally slipped ahead of Randy de Puniet to take 13th place.
Edwards was 2.
8s from Stoner and 1.
1s from Alvaro Bautista who was last regular MotoGP prototype rider.
MotoGP Qatar FP2 results:01- Casey Stoner – Repsol Honda Team – Honda RC213V – 1’55.
96002- Jorge Lorenzo – Yamaha Factory Racing – Yamaha YZR M1 – + 0.
21403- Andrea Dovizioso – Monster Yamaha Tech 3 – Yamaha YZR M1 – + 0.
68804- Ben Spies – Yamaha Factory Racing – Yamaha YZR M1 – + 0.
71105- Hector Barbera – Pramac Racing Team – Ducati Desmosedici GP12 – + 0.
71806- Dani Pedrosa – Repsol Honda Team – Honda RC213V – + 0.
73707- Nicky Hayden – Ducati Team – Ducati Desmosedici GP12 – + 0.
82208- Cal Crutchlow – Monster Yamaha Tech 3 – Yamaha YZR M1 – + 0.
85409- Stefan Bradl – LCR Honda MotoGP – Honda RC213V – + 1.
23710- Valentino Rossi – Ducati Team – Ducati Desmosedici GP12 – + 1.
31411- Karel Abraham – Cardion AB Motoracing – Ducati Desmosedici GP12 – + 1.
56312- Alvaro Bautista – San Carlo Honda Gresini – Honda RC213V – + 1.
70813- Colin Edwards – NGM Mobile Forward Racing – Suter BMW – + 2.
84114- Randy De Puniet – Power Electronics Aspar – ART GP12 – + 2.
98515- Yonny Hernandez – Avintia Blusens – FTR Kawasaki – + 3.
73816- Aleix Espargaro – Power Electronics Aspar – ART GP12 – + 4.
03717- Michele Pirro – San Carlo Honda Gresini – FTR Honda – + 4.
27118- Mattia Pasini – Speed Master Team – ART GP12 – + 4.
41319- Danilo Petrucci – CAME Iodaracing Project – Ioda TR003 – + 4.
44420- Ivan Silva – Avintia Blusens – FTR Kawasaki – + 4.
82721- James Ellison – Paul Bird Motorsport – ART GP12 – + 6.
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