Stoner at a loss over front end problems

Casey Stoner suffered the bitter disappointment of a second DNF of the season at Le Mans on Sunday, when he crashed out at slow speed on lap two of the Monster Energy Grand Prix de France at Turn 6.

The Australian was not pushing his bike hard and had not experienced any problems with his GP10 prototype earlier in the weekend, and was therefore extremely frustrated after targeting a first podium of the 2010 season.

“I pushed that bike around all weekend and it had been almost faultless,” he explained after the third round. “I did need to get it hooked up a little better out of the corners but we had not had a problem with the front end all weekend, so there was no reason for it. I went through that corner and lost the front about halfway through it, and it’s not really a corner where you are pushing.”

He continued: “We need to start figuring out what’s going wrong and so far we have not made the Championship start we wanted to. It’s making things extremely difficult, if not impossible for us. So we just have to look to the next race.”

Stoner’s race pace throughout the weekend had indicated that he would challenge at the front, and he commended race winner Jorge Lorenzo’s display.

“I’m extremely disappointed,” Stoner stated. “We had a really good shot at giving Jorge a run for his money. Obviously he was going to be the one we were going to try and battle with. He made the others look a little silly today, and my hat goes off to him. It would have been nice to be up front.”

Next up is a circuit that Stoner won at last year, Mugello, and he is hopeful of getting his campaign back on track in Italy.

“We’ll see how we go in these next couple of races,” he said. “It’s not something I expected, but we have just got to keep our heads up for the next race.”