Despite suffering from jet lag and 48 hours of flights delays, Casey Stoner was in fast form at the Losail Circuit today, posting the second fastest overall time in free practice. Riding the LCR Honda RC221V, Stoner was one second under the lap record with a superb display that saw him finish just 0.006s behind 2000 world champion Kenny Roberts Jr in the afternoon session. In the morning free practice, Stoner stepped straight from aircraft to RCV -- and set the fastest time at the end of the one hour session, continuing that strong form after a lunch-time nap. Stoner was scheduled to arrive in Doha on Tuesday afternoon but eventually arrived at 8:20am this morning and was rushed to the circuit by LCR team boss Lucio Cechinello. Technical problems had delayed Stoner's scheduled flight and he was delayed further in Dubai, being forced to grab just two hour sleep at the airport overnight.

Stoner's fastest lap today, set on race tyres, was 1'56.911 with the track record held by Nicky Hayden at 1'57.903.

"Casey did a fantastic job today -- perhaps he should be late for every race ! After the progress of the Jerez test I expected Casey to be fast here, but not at the very top in the first session. We are concentrating on adapting the Honda race set-up for Casey's style, with no pressure. Casey won the 250cc GP here last year and was also very fast at this track in 125, so this has been a very positive start to the weekend."

"I didn't expect this, the last 48 hours has been the worst of my life -- I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. This morning I had a chocolate and a can of Red Bull in the car with Lucio coming from the airport, and then jumped on the bike. Today we continued the good work of the Jerez test last week, mainly on the front-end but also get more more drive grip at the rear. I ran the same front tyre for the whole of the afternoon session and did my fastest time on lap 19 -- my final lap. I haven't had much sleep for two days and I'm still getting over the flu I had last week – I feel weak and very tired.."