Podium finish for Casey Stoner’s final Ducati Race
Added on Monday, November 8th, 2010 by Carole Nash Editor | No Comments
Podium finish for Casey Stoner’s final Ducati Race
Aussie rider Casey Stoner didn’t quite finish at the top in the final race of the MotoGP season but he finished his Ducati career on a high, coming a close second to current Champion Jorge Lorenzo, after leading for the first 22 laps.
Stoner bid Ducati farewell with a well deserved second place on the podium, giving Lorenzo a run for his money and leading the race for the opening 22 laps, before coming under attack from the Fiat Yamaha rider. Stoner settled for second place after he was unable to match the pace of the championship winner but it was a great end to the season and a fine farewell to his Ducati team, who he has been riding with for four years.
The 25-year-old said: “The lap times we were doing in practice and qualifying sort of covered up a lot of problems people didn’t see behind the scenes.
“I was cautious going into the race. We knew it wasn’t going to be how everybody thought it was going to be and we just tried to get the best start we could, because we knew if we were back in the pack a little bit with the hard tyre we chose.
“We were struggling to warm up the tyre a little bit. So if we were back behind a few people I think I’d have struggled to overtake and get through to the front. I was just braking as hard as I could, going as deep as I could into the corners to make sure nobody was coming past me.
“I was trying not to make mistakes and trying to keep my corner speed and my lap times still consistent. I had a lot of pressure coming from behind but I just tried to do everything we could and as best as I could.
“I saw that Jorge was quite a way back at the start and I knew that he’d been running some pretty good lap times to be able to catch up. So I knew it was only a matter of time before he made a move and tried to get past.
“I did everything I could to try to block, but it was inevitable that Jorge was going to come past. And from that moment I just tried to hang onto him, but there was no chance.”
The Aussie rider also praised Lorenzo for his ninth win of the 2010 season, adding: “Hat’s off to Jorge. He’s won this championship and proved why he’s world champion again, similar to the last race in Portugal.”
Stoner added that it wasn’t all disappointment, saying: “I’ve just got to look forward to next year and I think this is a great way to sign off with Ducati.”
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