Front confidence restored for Casey Stoner

Casey Stoner is confident he won’t be tormented by the same front-end problems at Honda that badly hindered his 2010 title tilt with Ducati.

Stoner struggled with front-end feeling at Ducati for most of last season and his title challenge was undermined by five race crashes.

All were front-end losses including one when he was leading the season’s opening race in Qatar and others came when he was in podium contention in Estoril, Sepang and Le Mans.

But having impressed again during his second testing appearance for the Repsol Honda squad in Malaysia last week, the 2007 world champion believes he’s already comfortable with front feeling of the factory RC212V.

Stoner, who finished the Sepang test with the third quickest time, said in a media debrief: “With Ducati it is just a different way to ride and obviously it is not slow because I’ve won more races than anybody in the last four years. At this track (Sepang) we struggled with a bit of chattering with the Ducati and also closing the front in the long corners. There is a lot of braking on the edge here and I struggled with a little bit of that in the past year. But with the Honda it has been fantastic. I lost the front on the last day and crashed but that was on the kerb. Other than this I didn’t lose the front in three days and for me that is very different.”