Stoner happy with German result after fight for third

Casey Stoner said that he felt the benefit of the race restart at the eni Motorrad Grand Prix Deutschland, where he took third place after a red flag saw the Sachsenring contest run a shortened second race.

Randy de Puniet’s crash on lap nine halted the original race, and the 25-minute interval before a second 21-lap contest began allowed Stoner and his Ducati team to change the rear tyre he was using, an alteration that the Australian said made a big difference.

“I thought it was going to affect us in a bad way but it actually helped us slightly,” said Stoner of the restart. “In the first part of the race we had a new rear tyre that wasn’t producing the grip that the tyres had been all weekend. I just wasn’t able to keep up with the lap times being set by Dani and Jorge.”

“For the second part of the race we went back to a tyre we were using in qualifying yesterday so it already had laps on it, and immediately it felt better with more grip and a better feeling in mid-turn. We were able to run a lot faster lap times, maybe three or four-tenths of a second consistently. I tried to chase the top two down but didn’t quite have the pace.”

As race winner Pedrosa and Championship leader Lorenzo remained ahead, Stoner became engaged in a battle with Valentino Rossi for third, a fight the Ducati man won thanks to an overtake on the final corner of the last lap.

“I saw Valentino coming and he had a much higher pace than me and I thought he would just take off if he got past. So I tried to do everything I could to stay with him and when I got an opportunity to overtake him it came down to the last two laps,” explained Stoner. “We had a few nice passes and I just had to go for it in the last corner, and it worked out. I’m pretty happy with the result, and we managed to pick up points when we needed to.”

Next up is the Red Bull US Grand prix at Laguna Seca, and Stoner looked ahead to next weekend by saying: “If we can get a bit more grip out of the tyres then we should be a little more competitive. We thought today we should have been running with Jorge and Dani for most of the race, but I just was just a little bit off the back and couldn’t quite close the gap. I’ve got a bit of work to do but we will see what happens at Laguna.”