MotoGP – Phillip Island FP1 – Rossi precedes Stoner, Lorenzo slips

Valentino Rossi set the best time in 1'31.032 in Friday's free practice session at Phillip Island, the fifteenth and third last stage of the 2009 world championship. The eight-time world champion achieved this benchmark towards the middle of the session, managing to stay at command despite the attacks of Casey Stoner, very fast towards the end with the Ducati on his home circuit and who here too is demonstrating that the two months of absence from racing have not made him lose his "speed". Returning to Rossi, it must be said that he covered 31 laps of the Australian circuit, far ahead of his teammate and rival in the title race Jorge Lorenzo, who was only sixth and involved in a crash.

The Spanish rider who won in Estoril lost the front end of his Yamaha when it crashed a few minutes before the end of the tests, thus failing to make up ground in the standings. In front of him, in addition to Rossi and Stoner, there are also Dani Pedrosa (Honda Repsol), third, Alex De Angelis (Honda San Carlo Gresini) very fast in fourth position and Colin Edwards, fifth with the Team Tech 3 Yamaha.

Good seventh time for James Toseland who will return to Superbike in 2010, managing to precede Andrea Dovizioso and Mika Kallio, who crashed. Falls also for the British Yamaha rider himself and, above all, for Niccolò Canepa, with a bad flight at the entrance to the curve at the end of the pit straight.

The Genoese rider is thus last in the standings, while Loris Capirossi managed to move into tenth position and Marco Melandri in 14th with the Kawasaki. Nicky Hayden with the other official Ducati is eleventh ahead of the Hondas of the Frenchman Randy De Puniet and the Spaniard Toni Elias while Chris Vermeulen who will compete in Superbike with Kawasaki next year achieved only the fifteenth time ahead of Gabor Talmacsi and the aforementioned Niccolo Canepa.

The Australian weekend therefore begins well for Valentino Rossi, the Pesaro native has in fact inflicted the first "blow" on his team-mate Jorge Lorenzo who this time may not be able to exploit the "Stoner-Pedrosa" factor which, unlike Estoril, could benefit the from Pesaro. However, we are only at the beginning but they say that "he who begins well is halfway there".... we'll see.