MotoGP – Losail Free practice 1 – Stoner in the lead, Rossi good

The 2011 MotoGP World Championship has officially started: in fact, the first free practices for the Qatar Grand Prix have just concluded on the Losail circuit. The very fast Casey Stoner is still leading the classification, this time making space behind him: with a time of 1'55.752 the Australian leads his first rival Dani Pedrosa by a good 6 tenths.

With the elusive Stoner removed, a group of riders opens up, all very close to each other. In addition to Pedrosa's second time, the third time was a surprise for Hector Barberà's Ducati, again with a delay from the top of around 6 tenths. Same gap also for the fourth classified rider, the Italian Marco Simoncelli riding the Honda of the Gresini team.

But the good news from Ducati does not only come from Barberà: with the fifth fastest time in 1'56.479 we find Valentino Rossi, 7 tenths behind Stoner, but very close to all the other opponents on the track. Less positive session instead at Yamaha: at the beginning of the session Ben Spies started well, only to then finish sixth behind Rossi. The American, however, continues to stay ahead of teammate Jorge Lorenzo: the Spaniard struggled a bit during the session, and in the end he achieved the seventh fastest time, around 8 tenths of a second from the best time.

Another Ducati closes the top ten, that of Randy De Puniet with the ninth time, and the private M1 of Colin Edwards with the tenth time. Slow start, however, for another American, Nicky Hayden: Kentucky Kid gets only the 11th time, while rookie Cal Crutchlow also finds the first difficulties in the transition from Superbike to MotoGP (14th time for the Englishman). As in the last tests in Qatar, Toni Elias is the only Honda rider who remains quite behind with the last time in the standings.