Misano MotoGP: Casey Stoner in seventh heaven

Casey Stoner proved that a recurrence of an old wrist injury has done little to knock him out of his stride as he claimed a seventh successive pole positon in Misano today.

The Aussie dominated qualifying to leave home favourite Valentino Rossi trailing in second by a massive 0.510s.

Stoner, who goes into tomorrow’s 28-lap race trailing Fiat Yamaha rider by 50-points, said: “The hand wasn’t too much of a problem today although I didn’t want to risk working it too hard.

“There is a bit of bone floating around in there and when my wrist gets into a certain position in some of the corners the nerves get trapped and I get a shooting pain up my arm.

“I can deal with that though and we have an important job to do this weekend. We found a good setting for the bike this morning but it didn’t work as well in the higher temperatures this afternoon, so we had to switch back to something else and it worked much better.

“We worked so hard on the race setting that we only had time to use two qualifiers at the end instead of the usual three. With the first one I used a new front, which needed a couple of laps to get scrubbed in, so I came in to change the rear and whilst it was good, it wasn’t as good as the first one.

“So, the lap time could have been better but all in all I’m delighted to be on pole again. It’s going to be a long, tough race tomorrow but I’m looking forward to it.”