Stoner aiming for “most competitive race” yet

Casey Stoner battled to the bitter end of the hour-long qualifying session at Laguna Seca with Jorge Lorenzo for pole position in Sunday’s Red Bull U.S. Grand Prix, eventually closing at 0.191s off the Spaniard’s best lap to secure second position on the grid.

Stoner had looked all set for his second pole of the season when he regained the lead on the timesheet from Lorenzo towards the end of the session, and the Australian then improved on his own time further before the Championship leader’s late effort pushed him in front.

“We’re closer to the front than last week but we still need to improve the bike before tomorrow,” stated Stoner, who qualified with a lap time of 1’21.169. “I’m a little disappointed that we didn’t make full use of the session this afternoon and ended up going back to the setting we had this morning. We tried a few different things that weren’t really working and unfortunately one of the settings took a long time to change so we wasted time there.”

Despite lamenting the time he felt had been lost during the session Stoner was happy with his best lap, having been consistently fast throughout the hour.

“To be honest I was happy to post the time I did,” he said. “I thought we could have gone a bit quicker today considering how good the bike felt from yesterday to this morning but we just didn’t take that extra step.”

And looking ahead to tomorrow’s race Stoner, who is going for his first win of 2010, added: “Hopefully we can take that step in the warm-up and have our most competitive race of the season tomorrow.”