Casey Stoner has tire issues and front end chatter, Dani Pedrosa settles for third at Silverstone

Published on 17 Jun 2012 by Toni M.

Casey Stoner admitted that it took eighteen months for Honda to partially solve the rear chattering that has plagued him since he started riding the RC 213V, and with the introduction of the new spec front tire they had to throw away all the previous data they jad and change their set-up sccordingly. In an interview with Sportmediaset he said he could have been closer to Jorge Lorenzo in today’s race if he hadn’t had front end chatter (it’s strange that he decided to use the softer front tire compound which gave him front chatter during the Catalunya test) and consumed the left hand side of his rear tire - Ducati’s Nicky Hayden had the exact same rear tire issues and he faded to 7th.

“It wasn’t a great race for us today, we saw the pace the Yamahas had in the early laps and it was really worrying to me,” said Stoner. “As early as lap three the bike wasn’t feeling good, especially on the left side, the tyre destroyed itself almost immediately. My plan was to try and get to the front and hold them up but Ben was proving difficult to pass, then he made a small mistake and I was able to slip through and I tried to hold it from there. We knew we didn’t have a better pace than the other riders and it wouldn’t be long until they were on us so I did what I could to stay in front. Today we needed a little more grip and we would have been able to fight for the win but looking at the rear tyres at the end of the race, there was definitely something wrong with ours.”

Ever since he took out his former team mate Nicky Hayden at Estoril in 2006, Dani Pedrosa has become ultra careful when he puts his wheels near his team mate and not ruin their races, and today with Casey Stoner it wasn’t any different.

“I have mixed feelings after this race. I’m happy to be on the podium at this circuit for several reasons: it’s a track where I have always struggled a lot, we had a very tough weekend - it wasn’t easy for us to learn the circuit and set up the bike with these weather conditions, also I didn’t have one of my best race starts. I saw that Jorge was the man to follow, so I managed to pass Dovizioso, Bautista and Spies and caught Casey, who was second. But at this time, Jorge was gone and I tried twice to pass Casey, but he pulled a little again and in the last chicane, I tried to overtake him but I had a flash in my mind and I saw both Repsol Honda’s on the ground, so I settled for third place,” said Pedrosa.