Edwards, Rossi keep control in Qatar.

Colin Edwards and Valentino Rossi maintained Yamaha's current pre-season domination by holding their one-two at the top of the Qatar timesheets during the second day of desert action.

The result marked the fifth day in a row that either Edwards or Rossi has led the testing timesheets, stretching back to the start of last week's Sepang test, and the third day in succession that Edwards has surprisingly edged out his former five times title winning team-mate.

Edwards held top on Wednesday by lapping almost half a second quicker than his day one pace, to beat Rossi by 0.291secs, as the former double World Superbike champion also broke the Italian's 2006 race lap record - set on the way to victory with the old 990cc M1 - by over one second.

"Today was impressive!" beamed Edwards. "We got our second-choice front tyre from Michelin [the 16" sets that brought Edwards success in Sepang were unavailable for the Qatar visit] and it was instantly better than the third-choice one we had yesterday, it gave me a lot more confidence in the front-end. We made some big changes to the setting last night and we're now in a different realm, close to what Valentino was running yesterday. It's basically just something that works well on a flat track with no bumps and it felt really good. We made a small change to the rear shock and then we were just testing tyres for the rest of the day.

"We tested a series of right-side rubbers and then a series of left-side rubbers, searching for the best combination for the race. The times are great but they're coming quite easily, I really haven't pushed out of my comfort zone at all yet. This afternoon was slower because of the wind but at the end of the day, with the last rear tyre, I got my head down for a couple of laps and we still did a 56.4! We'll do a long run tomorrow and see how it all works out then; hopefully we can stay on top and make it a clean sheet for the test!"

Meanwhile, Rossi also bettered his time from yesterday with a lap of 1min 56.537secs, despite running into a few set-up problems which he will look to iron-out on Thursday's third and final day.

"So, another fast day for Yamaha and I am happy that we're one and two again," began The Doctor. "Actually, today we ran into a few problems which we need to work on, but anyway this is expected when you're getting faster and faster and it's much better that we find the problems now than in the race! Again we need to work to improve the stability of the bike under braking and this is a very delicate thing because we don't want to sacrifice the agility of our bike. We need to find the right balance.

"We tried some more tyres for Michelin and today we didn't find anything so great in this area, but we made some decisions about what to try for our long run tomorrow. We're fast and we know we're at a good level, but we can't afford to relax because our rivals are getting closer and I think it's going to be a very great battle this season," added the #46. "Tomorrow we'll try to fix the problems we found today, we have some ideas and I am sure we can have a good last day."

Best of the rest, and the fastest Honda on day two, was 2006 Rookie Of The Year Dani Pedrosa. The Spaniard was another rider to spearhead the development of Michelin's new front rubber, and clocked his quickest time towards the end of the afternoon session - when he lapped within 0.175secs of Rossi. The second RC212V in the top six was that of countryman Carlos Checa, who put in the most laps of any rider as part of a race simulation for Honda LCR.

Ducati's new factory rider Casey Stoner, who took pole for last year's grand prix, was closely followed by a resurgent John Hopkins, who is looking to regain some of Suzuki's pre-Phillip Island form when they were the early 800cc frontrunners.

Shinya Nakano and Randy de Puniet rounded off a top eight all within a second of fastest rider Edwards. de Puniet's progress was observed from trackside by Kawasaki team-mate Olivier Jacque, who sat out today's session as a precautionary measure following a fall on Tuesday.

Kenny Roberts Jr and Marco Melandri were just ahead of world champion Nicky Hayden, who suffered a small crash on the opening run-out at Losail. He was back on the bike immediately, eager to put in as many laps as possible on the new 800cc machine.

Joining Jacque on the sidelines was Ilmor GP rider Jeremy McWilliams, who elected to rest his still tender leg after an intense return to action yesterday. The two should both be back in action on Thursday, to once again line up the entire 2007 MotoGP grid for the final day of the Official Qatar Test.