Indianapolis MotoGP: Casey Stoner hampered by wrist injury

Casey Stoner admitted his left wrist injury is causing him major problems in Indianapolis as he saw his run of seven successive pole positions ended by Valentino Rossi.

The Aussie qualified second on the grid for tomorrow’s 28-lap race in full dry conditions today, but he revealed he is being hampered by a five-year-old left wrist injury that has suddenly flared up again.

Stoner is having too ride his factory Ducati with the wrist heavily taped to ease the pain and discomfort, with the Indianapolis circuit left-handed.

He said: “We’ve been trying to tape it so it takes the pressure off the brakes because it’s a left-hand track and you’re always sitting off to the left-hand side a little bit.

“It’s been a little difficult, and this afternoon we didn’t have the taping perfect; there wasn’t enough strength to keep it over. It’s a pain in the butt, but it’s not a reason I’ve run second. I’ve had a bit of a rough weekend. I knocked my confidence a bit yesterday with the crash. I didn’t understand why we went down again.

“It definitely hasn’t gone to plan the last five or six weekends. But we’ve been happy enough with the position that we ended up. We’re struggling a little bit with the front end today. There’s a few parts of the track that we seem to get quite a lot of chatter, and it’s hard to understand why. We changed a few things but we just couldn’t seem to fix those problems.

“But, I mean, to be second on the grid, I wasn’t really expecting great things this afternoon. We missed out in the last ten or fifteen minutes of the morning session when the track started to dry out a little bit. I struggled to get the right setting and good feeling. So I’m pleasantly surprised with a front row because I wasn’t expecting it today.”

Dire weather forecasts for tomorrow have predicted a 100 per cent chance of rain, and Stoner said that would cause issues with grip on the new surface, which saw sections get waterlogged during yesterday’s deluge.

“The only real drama with the circuit in the wet was just the new parts, the new surface holding a lot of water. It wasn’t dispersing it anywhere, and when it started to dry out the old part of the track was completely bone dry, and the new track was still quite holding a lot of water. So that’s the only issue, I’d say.

“If it’s going to be a 50/50 race and it starts to dry out, which tyre to go on will be hard to decide because the wet tyres are just going to destroy themselves on the last part of the track, but on the first part there’s going to be a lot of water still.”