Jerez MotoGP: Casey Stoner ‘surprised’ with front row

Despite topping the timesheets at the end of opening free practice yesterday, former world champion Casey Stoner declared himself ‘surprised’ after he claimed a front row start for the Spanish MotoGP race in Jerez.

Stoner was surprised to finish behind Spanish duo Dani Pedrosa and Jorge Lorenzo after a problematic qualifying session that saw him fail to get a comfortable set-up with his factory Ducati GP10. 

The Australian ended with a best time of 1.39.511 to finish 0.309s away from Repsol Honda rider Pedrosa in pole position and he just survived a late attack from Valentino Rossi. The Italian closed to within 0.047s of Stoner but the 24-year-old clung on.

Stoner said: “I’m surprised to be on the front row. The weekend started out so well for us and I felt comfortable with the bike. But like always you need to try and improve as much as possible and everything we have done to try and improve the bike, we have really struggled with.

“We tried a few more things this afternoon but none of it really worked and we went back to the original set-up. It’s not the best situation to be in. I’m happy with the bike in general but we still need a couple of tenths more to be comfortable and ride at that pace.

“We won’t try radical steps but some bigger steps than what we have tried all weekend to try and close the gap. In general the bike is working so much better than it has before at this track but we will have to wait and see with the race.

“I think it will be close and the lap times have been surprising, going up and down in every session. We’ll have to see what the conditions are and get in there and fight for a podium at least.”

Stoner badly needs a top finish tomorrow having surrendered 25 precious points when he crashed out of the season’s opening race in Qatar while holding a comfortable lead.

He added: “Hopefully we got our one crash this year out of the way and I would have liked to have none but the first race started as it did. I’ve got to make up some ground but you do that by winning races but at the same time we have to finish. I’m a bit disappointed with the first race but things like that can happen.”