Championship leader Valentino Rossi was quickest in practice for the FIM MotoGP World Championship race at Laguna Seca.
The Italian, who is looking for a third consecutive victory this weekend, was the only rider to dip under one minute 22 seconds.
The Fiat Yamaha rider clocked 1min 21.981secs with his final lap of the day to finish 0.112s ahead of team-mate Jorge Lorenzo and 0.189 clear of Casey Stoner in third.
Rossi leads Spaniard Lorenzo by five points in the overall standings, with Australian Stoner four points further back.
Ducati rider Stoner, who struggled in the last two races with fatigue, led the way in for much of practice today, but was overhauled late on but his championship rivals.
The top three were comfortably quicker than fourth-fastest Dani Pedrosa.
Toni Elias, Andrea Dovizioso, Marco Melandri, Chris Vermeulen, Colin Edwards and Alex de Angelis completed the top 10.
Britain's James Toseland was 13th quickest.
"It was a good first practice because I'm in first place and also because we worked well on the bike," said Rossi. "We checked some interesting things, we tried to improve the feeling with the bike and we gathered important data in order to improve on Saturday.
"Already the lap time is not too bad. We are very close together again with Stoner and Lorenzo but it looks like we are competitive and our Yamaha is good here at this track."
Stoner, meanwhile, was not so optimistic as the Australian battles a mysterious virus that has hampered his fitness in recent races.
"The bike's working well, which is once again a disappointment for me because I don't think that we can really keep up for the race this weekend," he said.
"Everything's been working well these past three races, and I feel like we should have been fighting at the front - even if we finished in the same positions. It looks like it's going to be a similar weekend to the last two, but at least this time we are kind of expecting it, whereas at Assen I thought that all my problems were over."
No comments:
Post a Comment