Repsol Honda's Casey Stoner became the first man to lap Sepang in under two minutes on the final day of MotoGP testing which does not bode well for the rest of the field or for the paying public when 2012 kicks off at Qatar given he had one less day on track than his competition.

With all the times combined, his 1'59.607 was nearly six-tenths quicker than Jorge Lorenzo and Dani Pedrosa while Ben Spies was another quarter of a second back and Valentino Rossi, on the new GP12, was another four-tenths slower than the former World Superbike Champion.

Stoner was also the best part of two seconds faster than Pedrosa's pole time from last year, which is frightening seeing as he is still complaining of a bad back. Basic maths says that on that pace, with everything remaining equal, he could win the Sepang MotoGP by 12s in 2012…

"It's been a good test in general, we only managed two out of the three days unfortunately but the weather has been really good to us and we've been able to do what we planned. The day I missed hasn't affected us too much and we've managed to complete our testing programme, to be honest I think track conditions on the first day weren't that great anyway as the lap times were not so fast," said the world champion.

"I'm still not feeling great with my back but the bike is ok, so we've made progress in reducing the chatter a little more and trying a few different things, some small settings on the shock that we haven't tried before amongst other points. So far it's been pretty positive, we'll just have to wait and see what we have for the next test and hopefully improve a little more."