Honda LCR rider Casey Stoner finished today’s free practice at Brno in 12th position, his progress delayed by a minor technical problem. Stoner’s number one Honda RC211V was sidelined after just three laps of the afternoon session, forcing the young Australian rookie to switch to his spare bike.

Stoner and the LCR crew then spent most of the afternoon session working towards a comfortable set-up on the second RCV. Finally, Stoner was able to run a string of impressively consistent times -- five laps at 1’59s -- at the end of the session. Stoner had been sixth fastest in the morning session, just 0.3s off the pace of world championship leader, Honda rider Nicky Hayden. Warm and sunny conditions greeted riders at Brno on their return from a one month summer break.

“Unfortunately Casey’s rhythm in the afternoon session was upset by a small engine problem and he was forced to switch to his spare bike. The set-up on the spare was not ideal, and we lost some time making adjustments but with the data from today I’m sure tomorrow will be much better when Casey’s number one bike is running again.”

“I’m not sure what happened, but my number one bike stopped and that put a halt to our plans for the afternoon session because the spare was set-up differently. I didn’t have a comfortable feeling on the spare, and it cost us a lot of time to get the set-up close to my preferred bike. I felt good running in the 1’59s but I think the race pace will be faster so we need some improvement -- hopefully that will come tomorrow with two bikes running. I’m not sure who might have been running qualifying tyres this afternoon, some guys were doing some quick times, just for one lap -- times that I don’t think are possible in the race”.