Quotes of the Day – Saturday, Valencia
Added on Saturday, November 7th, 2009 by Carole Nash Editor
Quotes of the Day – Saturday, Valencia
Commenting on his pole position at the Spanish venue, Casey Stoner said: “I’m really happy, we had a bit of a bad run in Sepang, but this weekend everything’s gone really well and we’ve been quickest in every session. We’ve made small improvements to the bike each day. The only problem we’ve got now is the pretty windy conditions, which is making it very difficult to ride and understand where the limit is. I lost the front (of the bike) a few times on the last qualifying tyre, but there’s no way we’re going to be pushing that hard in the race.
“I’m feeling pretty good and the bike feels good, we just need to make sure tomorrow morning that everything’s still going smoothly and we’re happy with the setting. It’s going to be a very hard race, there are a lot of people going for this win and trying to get the best result they can. There’s hopefully going to be fireworks tomorrow.
“We’ve been strong at almost all the circuits this year. Maybe there have been one or two we haven’t been as strong at, but maybe that’s myself as well. Since the beginning of my career I haven’t been strong in some of those circuits. I had my first win here, I’ve always had pretty good results at most circuits to be honest, and we just seem to be getting the set-up right recently.
“It’d be a nice end to the season we’ve had so far. It’s definitely not gone the way we wanted it to, but I’m very happy with the way things have gone so far in this last period, and we’ll just have to see what tomorrow brings.” He added.
Second place Dani Pedrosa commented:
“At the end of qualifying we had a good lap time but we’ll try to improve our set-up a little bit. Lorenzo and Stoner are going a little bit faster than me, but we’re going to try and improve the main set-up.
“We will push (for the win) because I think the race is not decided. Sure Stoner is in good shape but we will try to do our best and hopefully we can have a great race.
“To have them here is very important, and I will push myself to be my best. But we are racing against other people, so we will try to go with them.”
Finally, 2009 World Superbike Champion, Ben Spies, commented: “It’s better than I expected this early on, with just three hours on the bike, but the package is great. The bike is great, the tyres are great, it’s just me now. I am slowly building up my faith in everything. It is not going to happen overnight, but I am quite pleased to be not so far off the other guys on the Yamaha.
“We’re competitive, so we have to try and get a good start in the race tomorrow, get in position to follow a few people and learn what we can. But it is a case of so far, so good. Every time we get on the bike we have to look at the lap time and make sure the gap to the front guys gets smaller and smaller. That’s what his weekend is for.
“I know who I am riding against and they are the world’s best riders, who have been on these bikes for a long time. So I can understand not being higher up the grid, and the riders around me on are fast guys!” He concluded.
