Honda LCR rookie ace Casey Stoner has qualified eleventh on the grid for tomorrow’s French Grand prix, a disappointing result following his sparkling form in free practice.

The 20-year-old Australian will start from the middle of the fourth row for the 22 lap race on the Bugatti Circuit at Le Mans. Stoner struggled with set-up problems in the afternoon qualifying and was unable to maximise his performance on soft qualifying tyres. His fastest lap today was only one tenth of a second (0.1s) faster than his best time on race tyres in Friday free practice. Stoner’s fastest time today was 1’35.430.

In this morning’s free practice on a damp and then drying track Stoner set the fastest time although qualifying speeds dropped by ten seconds in the sunny and warmer conditions for qualifying. Stoner and
the Honda LCR team will evaluate further set-up changes in tomorrow’s pre-race warm-up session.

“For sure we have a lot of work to do to find a better suspension set-up for the race. In better conditions today Casey was not able to go faster than his times on race tyres yesterday. If we can find some solutions I’m sure Casey can be very strong in the race -- that’s when he is at his best.”

“It is very disappointing, I was able to do these times on race tyres yesterday. This afternoon I struggled to go faster on qualifying tyres than I did yesterday on race tyres and I did not have a good feeling with the bike. I wasn’t too happy with some of the set-up changes and I kept losing the frontend, almost every time I touched the brakes. If we can get the bike back to the set-up I had on Friday then I should be in better shape for the race because we did find some more rear grip today. Let’s wait and see, some riders are good in qualifying but not so strong in the race.”