The End Of Chatter? Stoner Hopes So
Cycle News Staff | June 14, 2012
Repsol Honda’s Casey Stoner is hopeful that his recent test in Barcelona will fix the chatter problems that have plagued him since the beginning of the season, but he won’t know until he gets on track at the Silverstone circuit in England tomorrow morning.
“Our whole objective of the test was to reduce the rear chatter,” Stoner said in today’s pre-British Grand Prix press conference at the Silverstone Circuit. “We think we’ve reduced it quite substantially and hopefully we can… with the improvement that we did make, we understand a little bit more the direction and I’m pretty sure we can reduce all of it this weekend, but we can’t be positive. We’re coming to a new track and if we can get some dry sessions we can understand, but we’re having a lot of chattering issues in the wet as well this year so hopefully by reducing it will do the same for the wet. We made some big steps in Barcelona so we’re pretty happy with that.”
The chatter problems have hindered Stoner’s performance on the RC213V since Bridgestone introduced the new range of tires with the rule changes that re-introduced 1000cc motorcycles in MotoGP. The new tires feature a softer construction.
