Casey Stoner - Photo Credit: Repsol Honda
Casey Stoner rued the rain which came at the worst possible moment for him in qualifying at Silverstone. The world champion had just pitted for a soft rear tyre but the unpredictable British weather intervened, leaving him down in third. Stoner is hoping the weather makes its mind up in time for the race as he feels he has a strong package, wet or dry.
“This afternoon was a little disappointing to be honest. We began the session and struggled with the bike, we couldn’t really get any edge grip and seemed to make the chatter worse. We were trying to fix some problems we had in the morning but ended up making them worse so we tried various things to improve them. Finally we found something that was working so we decided to scrap the lap and come in and put a new soft rear tyre on but it didn’t work for us as we got out there and the rain started to come, just enough to upset the bike a little. I was waiting for the rain to disappear so I could put a lap in, but unfortunately we didn’t get an opportunity and missed our chance at pole. For tomorrow I hope the race is one way or another, not a 50/50 race, but we’ll deal with whatever we have and I feel confident with both situations”.
Repsol Honda teammate Dani Pedrosa was also gearing up for a shot at pole before the rain came but doesn't share Stoner's optimism ahead of the race. The Spaniard will start fifth but admits he hasn't done any longer runs to give him an idea of his race performance.
“We’ve managed to improve our lap times quite a lot and our position on the grid a little, although by the end of the practice some drops of rain prevented us to make any time attack with the last set of tyres he had ready. I’m satisfied because we’ve improved the setup of the bike this afternoon and I think we can still do another step forward in the warm-up tomorrow. We had a better pace in qualifying, but my feeling didn’t change much compared to yesterday. We did many laps with the new front tyre, but only short runs, so the performance in the second half of the race is mystery. I keep thinking that the new front tyre is not safer; we’ve seen many crashed in the front. We have to have a good start tomorrow, but also be able to keep a good pace during the 20 laps. I don’t have a lot of experience in this track; I missed the race last year and in 2010 we chose the wrong tyre and we did a bad race, but we will do the maximum tomorrow to get a good result”.
