Casey Stoner, Dani Pedrosa and Andrea Dovizioso were all inside the top five on day one at the Sepang Test in Malaysia, with the Australian topping the timesheet.

The RC212V continued to perform well in pre-season and this was again in evidence through the strength of the Repsol Honda trio of Casey Stoner, Dani Pedrosa and Andrea Dovizioso on Tuesday in Malaysia.

Kicking off the second official Test of the year at Sepang with the collective main aim of improving braking stability and further developing the 2011 version of the bike, Stoner set the fastest lap of the day – a 2’00.987 – as he compared two chassis options.

“We had a really good day today, from the beginning I felt more comfortable with the bike again, like I understood the bike a little better,” said Stoner, who rode 53 laps. “We managed to work on set-up but we are still doing a chassis comparison, finding strong points and weak points on both. It's difficult to choose one or the other, whatever set-up we throw at them we seem to be able to run pretty similar lap times. We're very happy with the progress we made today and everything and everybody seems to be working well.”

Close on his tail was Pedrosa, and the Spaniard was 0.373s further back in second as he concentrated on chassis set-up and electronic mapping.

“We made the most of the Test today which is a good job because it looks like tomorrow we will get some rain,” said Pedrosa, whose best lap was a 2’01.360. “In the morning, we focused on some different electronic mappings to improve corner entry and exit and in the afternoon we did some set-up modifications on the chassis to improve the stability when braking. The track temperature was high at the middle of the day and the track was quite slippery but we did a good Test and tomorrow we will work on smaller details. Also, physically my shoulder felt better on the bike than in the first Test. I had two more weeks and I've become stronger from training, so my condition is getting better.”

Andrea Dovizioso’s attentions were also placed on electronics, and the Italian also rode with a modified clutch as he placed fifth fastest.

"I'm really happy about how we have started this second Test,” commented Dovizioso, whose fastest effort was a 2’01.747. “The Honda engineers have done a very good job on the engine braking with the electronic system to improve the feeling in the rear, and this is really good because I have to say that it was our main problem last year. We have decreased the chattering compared to the first Test as well, so I'm very satisfied. We were able to be fast from the beginning even though we were not looking for a lap time today, and we tried three different tyre compounds and had a good pace with all of them.”