After finally breaking his duck at Estoril Casey Stoner can now say that he has won races at every single track that on the current MotoGP calendar, not to mention some that are now no longer on it.
The Australian who took his 35th career victory is now leading the series by one point, admitted that he had some bad chattering issues (you could actually see his rear tire jumping) and that is was worse than in Qatar and Jerez, but changing his riding style somewhat helped him keep Jorge Lorenzo at bay when the Yamaha rider started to reel him in and began putting pressure on him.
“In the end it was another fantastic weekend for us.
This morning we were more confident but also a little concerned because yesterday afternoon when we had a very similar setting to FP3 the bike was a little bit worse in the warm conditions.
In warm up we didn’t have a big problem with chatter but then for the race, under the warmer conditions, we struggled a lot more.
This was very difficult to ride with, in the first part of the race I was confident and attacking the track but I closed the front twice due to the chatter.
From this point I backed of a little, tried to stay smooth and just wanted to stay in front of Jorge and Dani, but Jorge was coming strong.
I had to try and keep my pace and not make too many mistakes, I was changing the mapping to try and reduce the chatter problem.
Towards the end of the race I began to understand how to ride around it, this made things smoother and I found some more pace and was able to bring it home for a great race win,” said Stoner.
Dani Pedrosa was highly tipped to take victory at Estoril, until everyone saw what his team mate did in this morning’s warm-up practice.
The Spaniard did get the holeshot, but his leading the race lasted very little as he suffered a big shake that sent his Honda sideways letting Stoner and Lorenzo through.
Pedrosa is now third in the standings sitting 14 points from his team mate.
“It’s been a really tough race from the beginning, the pace was very very high from the first lap to the final one”, said Pedrosa.
“Casey did a good race, unbelievably strong.
I had a big shake in the first braking area, Casey and Jorge overtook me and I lost 1.
5 seconds on the first lap.
During the race I had some issues in the middle of the corner, I was not fast with corner speed; each lap I tried to get a little better, to try and modify my riding style, the mapping, braking later, I tried everything, I managed to match the lap times but not to close the gap.
Three races on the podium is very good overall, but in three races we missed something, so let’s try it again in the next one.
To reach my 100th podium is amazing and shows how fast the time goes.
I’m very happy for that and I want to thank all my teams and sponsors during this time and especially Honda because I’ve been with them for my whole career”.