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Stoner considers quitting season
MotoGP Stoner's world title hopes in jeopardy
CASEY STONER has admitted his MotoGP season is in serious doubt due to continual pain in his wrist.
The 2007 world champion says that unless the wrist improves over the next fortnight his ability to contest the series will be under a cloud.
Stoner underwent an operation in November to repair an old injury to the wrist but says its movement is still hampered.
Remarkably, he set the fastest lap times in the first official test series, at Sepang in Malaysia earlier this month.
Last year's surgery was supposed to have resolved an ongoing scaphoid problem.
Stoner is pessimistic that his condition will improve before testing resumes on March 1.
"Three months have gone by and my wrist has little mobility and hurts badly," Stoner told MotoSprint magazine. "I don't like the way this story is going at all. I'll try not to think about it until the test in Qatar, then we'll see. If the situation in Qatar hasn't improved radically, then it means there will be plenty to worry about …
"I say that I shouldn't be in this situation, because the bone has healed, yet it hurts me badly. That's what I can't explain. It's been really disappointing finding out that after three months the wrist is a lot worse than I expected."
Stoner was unable to complete long runs at Sepang and was limited in his movement through some corners.
"I try to adapt, to change the way I sit on the bike," he said.
"I make some movements to make up for the fact that the wrist barely moves and most of all it hurts me a lot under braking. It feels almost unreal to me that I manage to be so quick."
At least not all Aussies are .......
Meanwhile, Australian World Superbike star Troy Corser is confident his debutant BMW will be competitive from day one when the season opens at Phillip Island on Sunday week.
Corser said the German marque's inauguration into world superbikes at the island circuit would be "momentous".
To ensure the machine is on the pace, the former Suzuki campaigner will put it through a rigorous test during official trials from this week.
New manufacturers, even powerful factory teams, rarely make an impact in their first year of competition, but Corser is convinced that BMW will be a contender in the March 1 race.
He has backed up his belief with a series of pre-season tests, including one in Portugal recently which clocked him at less than a second off the pace-setting privateer Ducati of Briton Shane Byrne.
Corser is a master racer at Phillip Island - he has won there seven times since 1996 and holds the official lap record of 1 minute 31.826 seconds.
BMW will be working hard to maximise its top speed on Phillip Island's long straight.
"I am particularly impressed with the power my BMW produces, which you certainly need at a fast and flowing circuit like Phillip Island, which has one of the highest average speeds of any race track in the world," Corser said yesterday.
