Casey Stoner of Repsol Honda frustrated about Japanese Grand Prix error – MotoGP news
Repsol Honda rider Casey Stoner is annoyed due the unpredicted reaction of his bike over the bump during the recently held 2011 Japanese Grand Prix.
The number of bumps laid at the back of front stretch at the Twin Ring Motegi caused the early race leader Casey Stoner to badly wobble and then go wide into the gravel due to brakes malfunction.
Stoner said, “It could have been worse, but not a lot worse. Everything felt good all weekend and the bike has been fantastic and it was the same for the race. We got a gap quite easily, so we sort of wanted to manage that.”
Stoner, who had pulled a significant lead in the race, dropped to seventh seat at once. The Aussie led the race since the start until the fifth lap. After his mistake, Andrea Dovizioso was leading the race until he was handed a ‘ride through’ penalty.
From the start off, all three Repsol Honda riders were at the front. Stoner was tailed by Dovizioso ahead of Dani Pedrosa, who eventually won the event.
During the initial laps, Stoner was closely chased by Dovizioso. The Italian was able to lap faster than Stoner in the race but his soft tyre choice was not a worry for Stoner.
This let Stoner to push even harder to sustain the gap but he was not ready to struggle at the early laps as he was using hard tyres.
Following the wobble over the bumps, his bike’s brakes were ineffective for a moment which overshot him from the optimum braking point.
However, he thinks that could have ended in a much worse condition but he was lucky to reclaim the podium, with a loss of only four points to his lead from Jorge Lorenzo.
Stoner added, “It’s not one bump, there’s a lot. But I hadn’t had any kind of reaction off the bike all weekend and as I came over there I had the slightest movement before the bigger bump, because there’s a few small ones before it and as the front came
down it just shook.”
Considering his practice session through the race weekend, he never faced any kind of similar issue over the bumps. This kind of unpredicted error was a sheer disappointment for the championship leader.
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