Jerez MotoGP: Casey Stoner not desperate for victory

Casey Stoner has denied he will be going all-out to claim his first MotoGP victory at the Jerez circuit in Spain tomorrow.

The Aussie’s brilliant start to his Honda career continued today when he claimed pole position for the second successive race on board the 2011 factory RC212V machine.

The 2007 world champion clocked a best time of 1.38.757 to finish 0.158s quicker than Repsol Honda team-mate Dani Pedrosa.

Pedrosa and reigning world champion Jorge Lorenzo were the only two to lap inside of 0.5s of Stoner, who made a dream start to his HRC career with victory in Qatar last month.

But Stoner, who has only ever finished on the podium once in MotoGP at Jerez, said he wouldn’t be taking unnecessary risks to defeat home favourites Pedrosa and Lorenzo in front of a crowd of over 100,000 partisan fans tomorrow.

He said: “I’m not going crazy here for a victory. For me it’s just about getting good points here and we are already doing better than we expected. Every year here I have a motivation to do well because this is one track that has never gone well for me.

“If it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen but I always look to this race for this reason. I’ve only had one podium here in my whole career. I’ve had chances but things haven’t gone my way and I’ve made some mistakes. 

“Top two is a turnaround for me, podium I’m happy with, but I think we have the pace to fight these guys at the front.”

With Ben Spies 0.633s behind the best pace in fourth, tomorrow’s 27-lap race looks like being another fight between Stoner, Pedrosa and factory Yamaha rider Lorenzo.
Stoner added: “I don’t really know anybody’s race pace although Jorge’s was not too bad.

“He had new hard tyres on at the end but the lap times dropped down a little whereas I had more than race distance on the tyres doing mid 39s.  I’m happy with our set-up but what they (Pedrosa and Lorenzo) can do in a Spanish GP is a higher level.”

The only slight blip on another impressive day for Stoner was a run-off at the first corner as he started his final lap.

He ran into the gravel trap and toppled off the side of his V4 machine at barely walking pace and he said: “My second soft tyre we couldn’t get the same performance out of it, so we changed the bike to get it turning easier with not so much weight on the front.

“But we also couldn’t get grip out of the rear tyre.  So I pushed a little bit harder on the front and as I went on the brakes, the rear came up, I let off the brake and the rear came up and I was struggling to pull it up. I was lucky actually.”