Stoner hoping for more in Indy race

Casey Stoner experienced a Saturday he will be keen to atone for with a solid race result on Sunday after qualifying in sixth place. The Australian crashed in practice in the morning but recovered to set the fastest time of the final session before the afternoon’s qualification run.

"I’m not very happy with this afternoon's qualifying session, we expected to be a little faster,” he said. “During the session we struggled to find the grip with the hard tyre so we spent a lot of time trying to fix it and unfortunately we tried a couple of different things and then when we switched immediately to soft tyres we had trouble with the setting and we didn’t have a lot of feeling.”

“I’m a little disappointed for sure but I think we can expect a little bit better race pace, so I’m confident enough for tomorrow. I think we should have a bit better race pace than some of the riders in front of us today."

Stoner’s only previous visit to Indianapolis was in 2008 and produced a fourth-placed finish from second on the grid for the Australian.