Source: Supplied.

He may have been on an older version of Ducati’s factory Desmosedici GP chassis and had limited track time on Wednesday, but Australia’s Casey Stoner still managed to mix it up with MotoGP’s elite on day two of testing at Red Bull Ring.

Dual world champion Stoner set a 1m23.865s on day two, just 0.625s outside the benchmark of Andrea Iannone, before crashing on a soft tyre while pushing to increase his pace late in the afternoon session.

“We had quite a positive day but really didn’t get a lot of laps in because the test team had to put Michele Pirro on the bike to do some testing this afternoon,” Stoner explained. “We did lots of short runs to change the bike all the time, did a couple of comparisons in the chassis and we adjusted and moved everything around a bit to get the bike more stable under brakes on a good track.

“I’m happy and satisfied, but also a bit disappointed towards the end because it was the first time I had to push in four years with a soft tyre and it didn’t go well as I crashed at turn six. I’m pretty happy with the hard tyre and the bike felt good, even though in both days we were still using the previous chassis, but I think we can lap even better with the new version.”

Factory Ducati race regulars Iannone and Andrea Dovizioso led the way once again on day two utilising an evolution of the 2016 chassis, in what was a dominant showing from the Italian factory throughout the first test in Austria.