Daily Update MotoGP

Casey Stoner said his second consecutive race-ending crash was caused by a lack of grip from his Ducati's front tyre.

Just as he had at Brno a fortnight ago, Stoner fell while leading from Valentino Rossi in today's race. With Rossi going on to take a comfortable win, Stoner is now 75 points adrift in the championship.

He had shown dominant form until the race, having topped all the practice sessions and taken his seventh successive pole position.

"It is very disappointing for the weekend to end like this after showing such a high level of performance in practice," said Stoner.

"Basically we took the decision to put one lap on the race tyre in warm-up this morning to get it scrubbed in: we've done it before and not had a problem but today I could feel from the first lap that the grip wasn't right.

"After a few laps it started to feel better and I was gaining confidence but it let go."

The Australian is confident that he can bounce back from this string of errors.

"It's a real shame but, anyway, we tried hard here and once again I think we've shown we are very fast, we have a great bike and tyres that work fantastically," Stoner said. "This gives me confidence for next year and I'm looking forward to it already."

His Misano weekend was complicated when he aggravated a previous wrist fracture before practice - a problem that he won't be able to fully resolve until after the championship is over.

"It's huge disappointment this problem came out but I'll have to wait until the end of the season for an operation," Stoner said
ref[AS]