Honda LCR rider Casey Stoner produced another fast and consistent performance in today’s practice sessions for the British Grand Prix at Donington. Stoner finished third overall with a time of 1’29.064, almost one second under the track record held by American rider Colin Edwards. With a continuation of his speedy race pace from the Dutch TT, Stoner was just nine hundredths (0.09s) outside the best lap posted by fellow rookie Dani Pedrosa.

Stoner was consistently at the top of the time sheets in the opening one hour session and continued to reel off a string of consistent laps in the afternoon. In the morning session Stoner and Pedrosa, both rookies in MotoGP, were separated by just 0.02s, with Stoner second on the time sheets. Weather conditions were dry and warm for both sessions.

“A very positive start for Casey with a lot of fast and consistent lap times. He was in the top three in both sessions which is encouraging because the team still has more set-up options to check for the race. Already Casey is very impressive in the final sector of the lap, which is important at this track.”

“I made some good progress today with the bike but there’s still a long way to go until the set-up is perfect. I struggled a little on the final run this afternoon with the front-end, it was my first time out on new tyres in the session, and we probably went the wrong direction with the set-up. The track is fast although it’s hard work on a MotoGP bike, there's no real time to rest although it is a change to have some good weather for once, there’s been a lot of wet days this season.”