Not Too Bad Vale

The first Test of 2012 has now been completed at Sepang. No big surprises: Stoner way ahead, followed not that closely by Lorenzo and Pedrosa, implying a similar finish in 2012 to last season. Stoner riding under bike number 1 instead of 27 (if you've got it, flaunt it?) was by far the fastest rider on day 3 ... setting a new Sepang lap record for fastest ever race lap, fastest ever pole lap and fastest ever recorded lap on two wheels (1:59.607).

There were several interesting results on day 2 ... like Spies being only 0.157 off Stoner's pace and Hector Barbera finishing ahead of Valentino Rossi on the Pramac Ducati. Speaking of Rossi ... how's Ducati doing you ask? Well, not too bad really, but definately not Championship material quite yet. Vale finished 5th behind Spies, 1.2 off the pace ... well Stoner's record-breaking pace that is. Last year was worse, and this implies Rossi might get a look a podium or two depending on the venue, but that's just not good enough Ducati. Now that the chassis is sorted, time to fine tune the rest of the package.

Speaking of Yamaha ... how's Dovi doing on the Tech3? Well, he's looking good ... but unfortuantely not as good as he did last year on the Honda. I expect the podium runners will be pretty predicatable this year Stoner, Lorenzo, Pedrosa, with possibly a close finish to the championship. It could come down to attrition ... whoever can stay on the bike and not suffer any "training injuries" has the best shot. It will be interesting to see if the various track layouts can boost some of the second tier pilots onto the podium.

The wildcard factor is that there will be lots more lappers to contend with in the form of the CRT teams ... that is, a second class of bikes on the track, that might have a hard time getting a podium in a SuperBike race (depending on the rider). If the second tier "real MotoGP bikes" don't get spread out too much, the interesting racing could be for 4th, 5th and 6th this year.