Stoner dominates second practice as well

By Steven English

Friday, July 18th 2008, 22:31 GMT

Casey Stoner continued to pulverise the opposition in today's second practice session for this weekend's MotoGP round at Laguna Seca.

The reigning champion picked up where he left off in the day's earlier session and topped the time sheet throughout the hour. He maintained his advantage of just under a second over his nearest challengers, before underlining his superior pace by setting the quickest ever two-wheeled time around Laguna on his final lap of the session.

Stoner's 1:21.826 was eight tenths of a second better than the next best effort, which came from Repsol Honda's Nicky Hayden as he pipped Valentino Rossi for second place with his last lap.

Rossi finished up third, a tenth slower than he went this morning, with Alex de Angelis improving to fourth ahead of Chris Vermeulen and Shinya Nakano, who continued their strong showings.

Colin Edwards and Andrea Dovizioso knocked more than half a second off their best efforts from the morning session to finish up seventh and eighth, with Toni Elias and Loris Capirossi completing the top ten.

Ben Spies was 11th again, ahead of Marco Melandri who slipped back to 12th after running as high as fourth for much of the hour.

Dani Pedrosa improved his time and climbed up to 15th place, but is still riding in pain and is limping heavily when walking.

The two Kawasakis are bringing up the rear of the field with Jamie Hacking slipping backwards during the session, while Anthony West crashed heavily at Turn Four and caused a 20-minute delay to the session while the air fence was repaired.

Pos Rider               Bike          Time         Gap
1. Casey Stoner        Ducati        1:21.826
2. Nicky Hayden        Honda         1:22.634  +0.808
3. Valentino Rossi     Yamaha        1:22.769  +0.943
4. Alex de Angelis     Honda         1:22.808  +0.982
5. Chris Vermeulen     Suzuki        1:22.847  +1.021
6. Shinya Nakano       Honda         1:22.924  +1.098
7. Colin Edwards       Yamaha        1:23.077  +1.251
8. Andrea Dovizioso    Honda         1:23.097  +1.271
9. Toni Elias          Ducati        1:23.114  +1.288
10. Loris Capirossi     Suzuki        1:23.185  +1.359
11. Ben Spies           Suzuki        1:23.244  +1.418
12. Marco Melandri      Ducati        1:23.317  +1.491
13. Jorge Lorenzo       Yamaha        1:23.415  +1.589
14. Sylvain Guintoli    Ducati        1:23.495  +1.669
15. Dani Pedrosa        Honda         1:23.707  +1.881
16. James Toseland      Yamaha        1:23.943  +2.117
17. Randy de Puniet     Honda         1:23.955  +2.129
18. Jamie Hacking       Kawasaki      1:24.371  +2.545
19. Anthony West        Kawasaki      1:24.483  +2.657