Carlos Checa, a veteran of MotoGP who switched to World Superbikes and won the championship this year on a Ducati, has been drafted by the Ducati MotoGP team to help with the testing the new aluminium delta box framed Ducati GP Zero.  Ducati is calling it the GP zero because this is the base on which it hopes to build by the start of the 2012 MotoGP season.  Regular riders Valentino Rossi and Nicky Hayden were unavailable since Rossi is doing a one of rally in a Ford car as a tribute to his late friend Marco Simoncelli while Hayden is recovering from a surgery to his scaphoid.

Joining the Ducati on the track were the various CRT machines such as the BQR FTR Kawasaki, and NGM Forward Suter BMW with riders Yonny Hernandez and Colin Edwards respectively riding them.  This is the first time that Colin Edwards has appeared on the race track after his injury in the accident that took the life of Marco Simoncelli at Sepang, Malaysia.

Interestingly the factory BMW Superbike that Marco Melandri will race in 2012 was also present at the track with Melandri riding it for the first time.  Leon Haslam was also present and set faster times on the BMW than Melandri did.  While Haslam was third in the combined times (MotoGP, Moto2 and World Superbikes times) behind Checa on the Ducati GP Zero and Scott Redding on the Kalex Moto2 motorcycle, Melandri was in 16th position ahead of only Yonny Hernandez on the FTR Kawasaki CRT and Xavier Simeon on the Tech3 Moto2 bikes.  There were thirteen Moto2 bikes ahead of Melandri.  But he could be doing some simulations that did not need him to set super fast times.