Zoom Casey Stoner

Casey Stoner´s chances of retaining his MotoGP World Championship in 2008 could come down to a piece of Czech gravel, with the Australian revealing the extent of his bad luck at Brno in post-race testing.

The Ducati Marlboro star had experienced a rare crash whilst leading the latest round of the series but, unlike at Laguna Seca where he was able to rejoin the race, his attempts at getting back into the fight for valuable points proved unsuccessful this time around.

The determining factor ? A souvenir from his slide into the gravel trap.

“It was a perfectly-sized stone that got stuck in the carboration”, explained Stoner on the reasons for his having to park up the Desmosedici GP8. “You could search all the gravel traps in the world and you wouldn´t find one like it. We were just that unlucky.”

Stoner could at least leave Brno confident that he hadn´t lost his touch, with the fastest times of the post-race test and a solution to the cause of the crash itself. The big breakthrough came on the Tuesday, with the reigning World Champion believing that he will become ever more stable as a result.

“We made a big change which would have taken away the element of what caused the crash in the race. We´ve been leaning this bike over a long way, always scraping the footpegs. We took out that factor by changing the setup and the overall geometry. Now we can ride more on the bigger part of the tyre, which is safer and should give us more feedback”, added Stoner in his post-test analysis. “In any case, I´m a bit disappointed with the weekend but it is my only crash with a Ducati in a race. We´ve got to be pretty happy with how things have gone up to now.”

© DORNA / CAPSIS International