From today's Honda press conference...
Casey Stoner made his return to Honda machinery
after a four year absence, his last season for
Honda was in 2006 when he raced a 990cc RC211V
for LCR Honda. With the blessing of Ducati The
Australian rode the factory Repsol Honda RC212V
800cc machine for the first time, clocking an
astonishing second fastest time of the day at 1m
32.775s was just 0.763s down on pole sitter
Lorenzo's time. He was just a tenth of a second
outside his own FP3 time from the grand prix.
Stoner ran with the 2010 version of the RCV
chassis, using one of Pedrosa's 2010 race
machines. He concentrated his efforts on finding
the best possible riding position to suit his
style and when reasonably comfortable on the RCV
moved on to setting up the RCV for serious lap
times. As in all forms of automoto racing the
electronics play a huge part in machine set up
and the RC212V debutant devoted considerable
attention to that aspect of machine performance.
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