The Australian, who had topped both sessions at Sepang this week, improved his lap times dramatically today and scored an impressive 1:59.665 at only his second lap of the day. That performance was never to be matched throughout the day, the only rider coming close to it being Stoner's Honda teammate Dani Pedrosa.
The Spaniard completed Repsol Honda's 3rd 1-2 finish on Thursday after lapping the Sepang track 0.138 seconds slower than his new teammate. This was the third consecutive day in testing that Stoner and Pedrosa finished the running on top of the classification, in the same order everytime.
As it happened on Wednesday, the third bike in the timing reports was also a Honda, only this time it was ridden by Gresini's Marco Simoncelli. Third and final Honda works rider Andrea Dovisioso completed the quad of aces for the Japanese manufacturer in the last day at Sepang, ahead of Yamaha's Ben Spies.
The American riders was however more than a second off the pace of Stoner, as his programme included race simulations on hard tires and qualifying runs on soft tires. Spies headed a group of riders testing on Yamaha bikes, including Tech 3's Colin Edwards and reigning world champion Jorge Lorenzo.
Valentino Rossi returned to action after his lost day on Wednesday – due to flu – and scored only the 11th best time of the day, some 1.804 seconds off Stoner's pace.
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