US MotoGP: Casey Stoner aims to stretch title advantage

Casey Stoner says his main goal in this weekend’s US Grand Prix at Laguna Seca in California will be to stretch his title lead over reigning world champion Jorge Lorenzo heading into the summer break.

The Australian hasn’t won for three races and he’s seen a healthy 28-point lead over the factory Yamaha rider shrink to just 15 in the last two races.

Lorenzo’s victory in Mugello and a brilliant final corner overtake on Stoner at the Sachsenring last weekend have seen him claw his way back into contention.

And Repsol Honda rider Stoner, who hasn’t won since the rain-lashed British Grand Prix at Silverstone, said: “I thought I would have pulled out a few more points again last weekend but Jorge nicked them back off me in the last corner. Hopefully this weekend we can take the advantage back out again.

“The last few weekends we definitely had a good chance of winning, but we’ve struggled a little bit to get our pace. I think we’ve still got some work to do because we struggled a little bit at the end of the race in Germany like in Mugello, but with different circumstances. Hopefully this weekend we can rectify those problems and hold the pace for a little bit longer.”

Stoner told MCN he needs to find a set-up quicker this weekend to boost his hopes of being victorious in Laguna Seca for the first time since he won the world title in 2007.

He added: “We’ve got to try and get that base set-up quicker. In Assen it really put us on the back foot with the crash and since that time we’ve never really caught up again. We got badly injured in Assen and in Mugello I still wasn’t 100 per cent and then we came to Sachsenring and I felt pretty good on Friday. But then another crash put me on the back foot all weekend and we closed the gap by Warm-up. That didn’t give us enough time to check everything over and make sure we were going to be ok for the whole race. I think we can do a little bit better job but there’s no area in particular we need to improve in, it is just everything.”