Day one of the Iveco Australian Grand Prix saw Casey Stoner lead both the morning and afternoon sessions to put his Repsol Honda machine three-tenths of a second clear of Jorge Lorenzo (Yamaha Factory Racing) in the combined times. Stoner’s morning time of 1’30.475 stood as fastest lap of the day as the Australian, who also had an early crash in the first session, joined the other third of the field who did not improve upon their FP1 times.

Marco Simoncelli (San Carlo Honda Gresini Team) stepped up his pace by four-hundredths to slot himself ahead of Lorenzo in the afternoon despite a repeat of his morning’s misfortune of an early crash. The Italian was followed by Ben Spies (Yamaha Factory Racing) with a time of 1’31.495, an improvement of four-tenths, though it was not enough to knock Colin Edwards (Monster Yamaha Tech 3) out of fourth, leaving Spies to rank fifth behind his compatriot in the combined times.

Sixth for the day was Andrea Dovizioso (Repsol Honda) thanks to his time set in the morning, while team-mate Dani Pedrosa ranked seventh with a lap of 1’31.543. Hiroshi Aoyama (San Carlo Honda Gresini) ranked eighth for the day, with Nicky Hayden (Ducati Team) following the Japanese rider by 0.080s with his time set in the morning to place ninth.

Randy de Puniet (Pramac Racing) took the tenth spot ahead of Álvaro Bautista (Rizla Suzuki), while Valentino Rossi (Ducati Team) lingered in 13th, a second and a half behind leading man Stoner. Home rider Damien Cudlin, who is replacing an injured Héctor Barberá for the Mapfre Aspar team, paced one second behind Toni Elías on the LCR Honda in 16th.

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