Motegi MotoGP: Casey Stoner satisfied with second

Casey Stoner declared himself satisfied with the start of his preparations for the Japanese Grand Prix today after he finished a close second to Repsol Honda team-mate Dani Pedrosa in practice.

The Aussie was fastest in this morning’s opening free practice session with a best time of 1.47.289.

He was able to improve his pace to a 1.46.844 in cloudy but hot conditions this afternoon and he finished just 0.054s behind Spaniard Pedrosa.

Stoner, who holds a commanding 44-point lead over closest rival Jorge Lorenzo heading into Sunday’s 24-lap race, told MCN: “I’m pretty happy with the way it went. This morning was good and this afternoon we tried to go in a couple of different directions and it didn’t really work. We lost a lot of stability on the brakes trying to get more rear grip and we also had a few more problems with wheelie. We can try a couple of things tomorrow and now we know a little bit more the direction we want to go, but we might not hit it on the head. But at least the set-up we had this morning and the first part of this afternoon, we were pretty happy.”

Today’s practice was dominated by Honda with Pedrosa, Stoner, Andrea Dovizioso and Marco Simoncelli occupying the top four places.

And Stoner added: “This bike is more or less created on this circuit. There is a lot of input that happens from other circuits around the world but you definitely see that it works very well at this track. We’d still like the bike to be a little better on the brakes and a little easier to stop but the acceleration and the way it works out of the corners, it is definitely built for this. This track everything is working well with the Honda and you can see it by the results today.”