Stoner’s Jerez Nightmare Continues
Added on Monday, March 31st, 2008 by Carole Nash Editor
Both Stoner and Melandri had weekends to forget in Jerez. (Photo: Ducati)
Casey Stoner’s Jerez nightmare continued this weekend after an eleventh-place finish cost him his early lead in the MotoGP championship.
The Australian has never made the podium at the southern-Spanish circuit and found himself frustrated again in both qualifying and the race itself in the second round of the 2008 MotoGP season.
In qualifying, Stoner appeared to kick out at former teammate Chris Vermeulen after feeling that that Suzuki rider held him up on his final qualifying lap, forcing Stoner to make do with seventh on the grid.
And it got worse for the Australian, as two costly errors meant that he finished eleventh - his worst ever finishing position in his Grand Prix career.
“Today wasn’t my day - I suppose it wasn’t my weekend! We never found the set-up here that would let us make the most of our potential,” said the defending champion, who found himself in the gravel traps on two occasions.
“Normally braking is one of the strong points of our bike but here I just didn’t have the feeling with the front. I wasn’t quite on the limit when I ran off track the first time but I couldn’t get the bike stopped so it took me by surprise because we weren’t doing anything differently.
“After that I had to really push to get back into the race and I was pretty happy once I caught the group.
“Just when I was passing Nakano he let go of the brakes and touched my wheel, so I had nowhere to go but the gravel.
“I think I could have finished fifth, which I would have been happy with, but instead it was a bit of a disaster.
“The tyres weren’t perfect but they weren’t bad either so I can’t blame it on that.”
But Stoner stressed that the season is still young and expressed his determination to atone for Sunday’s disappointment.
“I’m not happy but it’s not the end of the world - there are plenty of other tracks and other races, starting with Portugal [in two weeks time], where we went well last year and finished on the podium, even if we had some little problems, and where this year we will try to fight for victory.”
Stoner’s teammate Marco Melandri had similar problems, finishing 12th after starting on the final row of the grid following a crash in qualifying.
