Here are extracts from some press releases from the opening day of MotoGP testing at Phillip Island in Australia. Colin Edwards was quickest on a qualifying tyre, but world champion Casey Stoner was second quickest on a worn race tyre. Ominous indeed. Here's the press release stuff:


Bright sunshine and 25 degrees celsius temperatures provided perfect conditions for the riders present. Stoner only did up 29 laps in 1'30 whilst experimenting with set-up and tyres, giving highly encouraging feedback on the new Bridgestone rubber. The World Champion is also continuing to regain strength in the shoulder he injured at Jerez towards the end of November, so much so that today he was able to complete a total of 73 laps. Repsol Honda's Nicky Hayden did 103 laps!

Casey Stoner best time: 1'30.178 (73 laps)"Everything went really well today, the feeling with the bike was perfect almost straight away. The new Bridgestones, which had already given us positive feedback at Sepang, also worked perfectly here at Phillip Island - one of them in particular improves the bike a lot in the exit of the corners, especially in the final section of the track. We've also taken a step forward with some small changes to the front, which have made the bike more stable and improved grip to the point where my best time came without pushing, on a tyre that already had 17 laps on it. I'm also really happy with the latest specs of the engine and the way it is responding under acceleration coming out of the corners. The weather was basically perfect all day apart from when the wind picked up a little in the afternoon but the smaller fairing, which we used for the race here in October, meant that it wasn't a problem. Towards the end of the day my shoulder was a little sore because this is such a physical track, with a lot of fast corners, but it is still better than it was in Malaysia."

Colin Edwards 1st 1.29.566 – 77 laps
“It was a good day. I started with the same setting I finished in Malaysia and played around with that for the day. The bike feels good at this track compared to what I raced with a few months ago. Yamaha has been working hard and the new parts are definitely a step in the right direction, particularly with the electronics, which has helped on corner entry and exit. With a qualifying tyre in Malaysia my time didn't get any better. I had a couple of handling issues with the qualifier in Sepang so once I got a good pace going I chucked a couple of qualifiers in. It is the first day but you never know what the weather is going to do down here, and it could be raining tomorrow. We wanted to make sure with the adjustments we were going to make for the qualifier that it was the right way. In Sepang I had too much weight on the rear. The rear was taking over and running me wide and we made a change to get more weight on the front and get it to turn a bit better. It seemed fine and I'm happy with the lap time.”



Phillip Island info
Circuit Record: Marco Melandri (Honda - 2005) 1'30.332
Best pole: Nicky Hayden (Honda - 2006) 1'29.020
Fastest Lap GP 2007: Valentino Rossi (Yamaha) 1'30.801
Pole 2007: Dani Pedrosa (Honda) 1'29.201
Unofficial lap times 30/01/2008
1. Colin EDWARDS (Yamaha) 1:29.566
2. Casey STONER (Ducati) 1:30.178
3. Alex DE ANGELIS (Honda) 1:30.688
4. Andrea DOVIZIOSO (Honda) 1:30.701
5. James TOSELAND (Yamaha) 1:30.864
6. Marco MELANDRI (Ducati) 1:30.869
7. Shinya NAKANO (Honda) 1:31.111
8. Nicky HAYDEN (Honda) 1:31.226
9. Loris CAPIROSSI (Suzuki) 1:31.274
10. Chris VERMEULEN (Suzuki) 1:31.317
11. Randy DE PUNIET (Honda) 1:31.436
12. John HOPKINS: (Kawasaki) 31.623
13. Anthony WEST (Kawasaki) 1:31.786
14. Sylvain GUINTOLI (Ducati) 1:32.484
15. Toni ELIAS (Ducati) 1:32.573