Casey Stoner was back on track with the rest of the MotoGP™ World Championship as he worked closely with the factory Ducati team.

For just the second time since re-joining Ducati in 2016, Casey Stoner took to the track with the GP15 to help development of the bike and assessing various settings for the Italian manufacturer. Stoner’s primary concern was in relation to the Magneti Marelli system, running tests for the test squad while Andrea Dovizioso and Andrea Iannone focused on the 2016 Ducati. Unfortunately a crash from Loris Baz forced Stoner, and the rest of the grid, to switch to hard tyres, thus altering the Australian and Ducati’s plan. The 2007 and 2011 World Champion was able to set a 2’01.103, good enough for ninth and only 0.051s slower than Iannone and over half a second faster than Dovizioso. When asked if this test was foreshadowing a potential wildcard, Stoner stressed he was here simply to test.

Casey Stoner:

“It’s been another good day today. Being on track with everybody else, with the good track conditions, gave us better indications of what we are feeling in comparison. We had a lot of different things to test, but unfortunately after Baz’s crash we had to change tyre compounds and retest everything. We went through a lot of the stack we had to do, and got some very positive input from the electronics, the engine braking, the clutch and in every aspect of the bike, together with a few things we can improve, and we gathered a lot of data to move forward from there.”