Michael Scott | April 1, 2009
Marlboro Ducati’s Casey Stoner has yet to run a full race simulation to test his left wrist, and is still suffering some pain and restricted movement – five months after the surgery. But with two weeks to the first race and now being able to train fully, Stoner said at the Jerez test – “I don’t think it will be a problem at Qatar.”Healing had been unexpectedly slow, he said, after his disintegrating scaphoid bone was rebuilt the week after the last GP of 2008. The problem now was not so much the wrist, but that he had been unable to train fully and his left side was lacking some strength as a result.”My arm is getting stronger and stronger, and it’s no trouble on the bike,” he said. “With two weeks more training, it’ll be a lot better by the first race.”Valentino Rossi agreed. “My feeling is that Casey’s wrist will be 100 percent by Qatar.”Stoner was the fastest of the MotoGP men at the Jerez test, topping Rossi’s best by .7 of a second.Meanwhile, Repsol Honda’s Dani Pedrosa has had the cast taken off his surgerically repaired left knee, fractured in a testing crash at Qatar, and has started rehabilitation exercises. But with the joint still very stiff, he is far from certain he will be able to make the first MotoGP of the season in Qatar.Pedrosa’s injured wrist was also in a cast, but only for two weeks. The knee, however, was immobilized for four weeks, and is hardly mobile at all, according to Repsol Honda team sources.”He [Pedrosa] will not be fully fit for Qatar or Japan, but we hope he will be able to race,” said the spokesman.
Michael Scott | MotoGP Editor
Scott has been covering MotoGP since long before it was MotoGP. Remember two-strokes? Scott does. He’s also a best-selling author of biographies on the lives of legendary racers such as Wayne Rainey and Barry Sheene.
