Indy MotoGP: Casey Stoner rues early season form

Casey Stoner reckons his early season form is what ruined his hopes of defending his MotoGP world title in 2008.

Despite successive crashes out of the lead in Brno and Misano that effectively ruled him out mounting a serious title challenge to Valentino Rossi, the Aussie reckons his faltering early season form seriously dented his hopes.

“Things definitely haven’t gone well, but we’re not putting the blame on anybody and I’ve been riding the best I can. The practice sessions have gone perfectly, and I’ve been learning a lot more.

“I felt that I was doing everything right like I have in the past and, you know, they really caught me out, these two crashes. So I’m a little bit disappointed with my results in the last few races. I’m here learning, I’m young, and we’ll see how it goes at this racetrack.

“The title was gone a while ago, and we started to bring it back and it was gone again. We always kept things reasonably open, but we were also just trying each race, just trying to do what we could. You know, not so much for the championship, but just the races themselves.

“I think the championship, like I said, was gone quite a few times. We gave too many points away at the beginning of the season, and that’s really stung us now. So with these two crashes, I think if we hadn’t had such a bad beginning of the season, we would have still been within reach, but that’s the way things have gone this year. That’s the way things seem to be panning out for me. We’ve just got to make sure we try and bring these last five races home very strong and get ready for next year.”

Asked how his damaged left wrist is shaping up after an old injury flared up again at the last race in Misano, the 22-year-old added: “I never actually re-broke it; it never healed in five years. I’ve been a little disappointed with the news of that. I thought it was sorted five years ago, but I kept having quite a lot of pains over the years, every now and then, nothing bad enough; and they just kept telling me, “It’s fine, it’s fine, scaphoids do this,” but we’ve had X-rays and scans and realize that the bone basically broke itself into a few pieces. We have got to decide what to do in the future with it, but for now we have just got to keep racing and see what we can do.”