After Ducati rider Casey Stoner dropped back from second place on the starting grid to seventh in the early stages of the MotoGP race at the historic Le Mans circuit , it became painfully obvious that he had some type of problem on board this seasons Desmosedici GP9.

Casey Stoner confirmed a lack of grip was the issue behind his troubles with wet tyres on the drying race surface and that due to this he had to play it safe and only switch onto slicks when the track was deemed to be dry enough.

2008 World Champion Valentino Rossi was one rider who was caught out by changing from wet to slick tyres too quickly, Casey Stoner was initially relieved to make the switch midway through the race, but when he did Stoner found a problem with his steering damper on his second bike, this problem would end up costing Casey valuable time in the dry part of the race.

But The Australian motorcycle champ managed to fix the problem albeit by himself and then overtook fellow Australian Chris Vermeulen for fifth place with ten laps to go, Stoner crossed the line in fifth place picking up up eleven crucial points to put him level in the championship standings with Valentino Rossi on 65 points, one behind Sunday’s race victor Jorge Lorenzo.

“I’m pretty disappointed because I don’t think we realised our potential at all on Sunday,” Stoner said. “The wet bike we started with had a big problem and I couldn’t find any traction from the warm-up lap. I never felt comfortable and I was losing a lot of time but it still wasn’t dry enough to come in for slick tyres.”

Casey Stoner then added “Then when I switched over my other bike had a problem with the steering damper and after four laps I had to take my hand off the gas coming down the straight to fix it. After that I felt much better, the bike was more comfortable and I was able to ride to my limit. I think if it wasn’t for that we would have been able to battle for the podium today but unfortunately these things happen sometimes and we just have to hope things work out better next time.”

With his focus now already shifting to the round five showdown at Mugello, Casey Stoner concluded with “I now really look forward to Mugello, one of my favourite tracks. I‘ve got some good results there and I feel we have a bit better package this year compared to the last one so hopefully we should be able to fight at the front.”