On paper, Casey Stoner's Jerez test followed the same pattern as his frustrating Spanish Grand Prix race weekend - a fast early lap which he subsequently struggled to improve upon.
The Ducati Marlboro rider set his best test time, good enough for sixth fastest but just 0.361sec from the top, on lap 4 of 66.
However, Stoner insisted real progress had been made in improving the front-end feeling from his GP10.
Stoner suffered front-end falls while leading at round one in Qatar, and on day one in Spain, before several further scares in the race.
“Today was quite productive because we found a race set-up for this track that was better than yesterday, with improved front feeling which is what we had been looking for all weekend,” said the Australian, who was fifth in Sunday's race.
“We went for quite a radical change and it did the trick but we'll have to wait and see if it works at other circuits because this place tends to put more pressure on front tyres than a lot of places and it requires a particular approach.
“Anyway, we go to Le Mans with a lot of useful data and hopefully it can help us there too.”
Nicky Hayden - who finished ahead of Casey Stoner for the first time as a team-mate on Sunday - took the opportunity to try a variety of different set-up options, clocking the seventh fastest lap time, 0.12sec behind Stoner.
“It has been a useful day even though we haven't found anything spectacular,” he admitted. “That's to be expected because we have taken huge steps forward to get to this point and it's always going to be more tricky to find those last couple of tenths.
“We changed some things with the geometry, suspension settings and a few general areas that we hadn't had time to try over the weekend. We got a lot of data which will be useful because we don't have another chance to test until after Brno."
The Ducati Marlboro rider set his best test time, good enough for sixth fastest but just 0.361sec from the top, on lap 4 of 66.
However, Stoner insisted real progress had been made in improving the front-end feeling from his GP10.
Stoner suffered front-end falls while leading at round one in Qatar, and on day one in Spain, before several further scares in the race.
“Today was quite productive because we found a race set-up for this track that was better than yesterday, with improved front feeling which is what we had been looking for all weekend,” said the Australian, who was fifth in Sunday's race.
“We went for quite a radical change and it did the trick but we'll have to wait and see if it works at other circuits because this place tends to put more pressure on front tyres than a lot of places and it requires a particular approach.
“Anyway, we go to Le Mans with a lot of useful data and hopefully it can help us there too.”
Nicky Hayden - who finished ahead of Casey Stoner for the first time as a team-mate on Sunday - took the opportunity to try a variety of different set-up options, clocking the seventh fastest lap time, 0.12sec behind Stoner.
“It has been a useful day even though we haven't found anything spectacular,” he admitted. “That's to be expected because we have taken huge steps forward to get to this point and it's always going to be more tricky to find those last couple of tenths.
“We changed some things with the geometry, suspension settings and a few general areas that we hadn't had time to try over the weekend. We got a lot of data which will be useful because we don't have another chance to test until after Brno."
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