Valentino Rossi was once again the man to beat as the MotoGP paddock returned to Sepang in Malaysia for their second test of the year.

Casey Stoner was second fastest, and also managed to reduce the gap between himself and Rossi since the last Malaysian testing session a few weeks ago. Ben Spies finished the fastest of the rookies and continued to impress by finishing 5th on the timesheets, just ahead of his team-mate Colin Edwards. Alvaro Bautista was the second fastest rookie of the day and managed to put his Suzuki in 9th place, despite suffering a lowside crash earlier in the day.

Jorge Lorenzo was notable for his absence – he is recovering from a motorcross accident and will miss the rest of the pre-season testing sessions.

1. Valentino Rossi Yamaha 2m01.068s 47
2. Casey Stoner Ducati 2m01.219s + 0.151s 33
3. Andrea Dovizioso Honda 2m01.631s + 0.563s 52
4. Loris Capirossi Suzuki 2m01.687s + 0.619s 52
5. Ben Spies Tech 3 Yamaha 2m01.843s + 0.775s 42
6. Colin Edwards Tech 3 Yamaha 2m01.897s + 0.829s 35
7. Dani Pedrosa Honda 2m02.036s + 0.968s 47
8. Mika Kallio Pramac Ducati 2m02.038s + 0.970s 76
9. Alvaro Bautista Suzuki 2m02.078s + 1.010s 34
10. Marco Melandri Gresini Honda 2m02.086s + 1.018s 52
11. Nicky Hayden Ducati 2m02.221s + 1.153s 61
12. Hiroshi Aoyama Interwetten Honda 2m02.419s + 1.351s 57
13. Aleix Espargaro Pramac Ducati 2m02.447s + 1.379s 35
14. Hector Barbera Aspar Ducati 2m02.485s + 1.417s 62
15. Randy de Puniet LCR Honda 2m02.535s + 1.467s 76
16. Marco Simoncelli Gresini Honda 2m03.254s + 2.186s 53
17. Norihiko Fujiwara Yamaha 2m04.681s + 3.613s 51
18. Wataru Yoshikawa Yamaha 2m04.967s + 3.899s 43

Valentino Rossi said:
“We started well today and we’re already very fast, so we’re quite happy about this. We’ve confirmed that the work we did at the last test was good and it’s clear we’re in good shape at this track. We worked on two or three different settings and today we’ve more or less made a decision about the right way to go with balance, suspension etc so this is good progress. We also tried some new electronic maps, to try to improve acceleration, but we need to do more work on this again tomorrow. It’s good to be fast at this stage and now we’re really just waiting to go to another track, to see how this new M1 will perform there. Tomorrow we will do a long run, maybe not race distance but just quite a few laps together, which will be the final part of our work at this track.”

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