Repsol Honda's Casey Stoner took a wrong turn with his setup in between MotoGP free practice sessions at Motegi earlier today and slipped from fastest to third as team-mate Dani Pedrosa dominated the afternoon's second outing.
Stoner made some alterations to his RC212V's corner entry and exit but found he couldn't get out of the final two corners with the same speed as he had in the morning, and then ran out of time to make any further alterations to the bike.
"The bike felt pretty good this morning and then this afternoon we started the session on pretty much the same setting that we ended on this morning, it felt ok but we felt we could improve. Unfortunately we went in slightly the wrong direction and couldn't get the bike to turn or hook up on the last two exits and then we didn't really have enough time to come in and make a change," said the 2007 world champion.
"We know what direction we want to go in now and hopefully tomorrow we can make the small improvements. The new surface here feels very good, very smooth and the grip level is impressive. It's really great to be racing here on a Honda in front of the home fans and I hope we can get a good qualifying tomorrow to prepare best for the race on Sunday."
