During today’s pre-event press conference at Brno, Casey Stoner officially announced that he is to become a father (Congrats to the new daddy-to-be!) stating that the knowing of his wife’s pregnancy may have contributed on his stance on boycotting the Motegi GP for fear of radition leaks from the Fukushima nuclear plant.
After the Sachsenring qualifying session Stoner had firmly stated that he had made up his mind and would not be attending, but now the Australian rider is more open to the idea after receiving further information from trusted people in his home country.
“There was a period after Silverstone that I felt very strongly that I wasn’t going to go there.
After things I’d seen and heard, But that came from a very strong emotion after we found out that Adriana was pregnant.
We’ve discussed it a lot since then and that’s a huge thing that’s happened in my life and now the most important.
I felt that the best thing I could do at that time was to make my mind up.
There was no way I was going to risk my wife or my family and it was very tough.
“But in these weeks I’ve taken a lot of data from Australia, people we feel we can trust on the matter, and I’m now slightly more open to it than I was before.
I think people can understand I was taken a little bit with my safety and that of my family in this matter.
We’ll see in these next weeks, we’ll continue talking and try and find out as much information as we can.
I’m not saying that I am going, but I’m not saying that I’m not now.
So we’ll just have to see what happens in the near future, ”commented the Australian rider.
Jorge Lorenzo was the first MotoGP rider to take a public stand against racing in Motegi, but he too has been coming to terms with the idea of going to Japan and today confirmed that he’ll make his final decision in the coming weeks, while the Safety Commision will further discuss the situation tomorrow and review the ARPA study which concluded that the radiation risk at Motegi is ‘negligible’.