FORMER world motorcycle champion Casey Stoner never expected his
first V8 Supercars race to be easy or uneventful - and he was right.Stoner's V8 debut in the opening race of the second-tier Dunlop Series at the Adelaide 500 on Friday evening ended early with his crashed car parked off the track.
A tyre failure caused him to hit the wall on the exit of the fast third turn of the Adelaide Parklands street circuit on the 12th of 20 laps, badly damaging the right-hand front suspension of his Triple Eight Holden Commodore.
Rather than cause more destruction, Stoner stopped further along the track out of the way, staying in his stricken car until the end of the race.
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The dual MotoGP world champion's dramas started several laps earlier
when the right front wheel started locking up under braking, wearing a
flat spot on the tyre that was eventually his undoing.Having qualified 12th of 30 cars on the grid, Stoner was in 10th place by the third lap, but soon after started losing positions as he tried to limit the wheel locking and nurse the car home to the finish, dropping to 14th. But the flat spot continued to get worse and wore the tread through to the canvas, causing the tyre to fail as he entered the left-hand third turn, sending his car into the safety wall.
''Once the tyre burst, I was in for a ride,'' Stoner said. ''I tried to save it, but it was game over.''
Stoner, who quit MotoGP racing at the end of last season, wasn't fazed by the accident and is looking forward to his second race on Saturday, which he will have to start from the back of the grid.
''If I'd completely made a mistake and put myself into wall, of course I'd be disappointed, but it was a flat-spotted tyre that caused it,'' he said. ''I probably should have come in [to the pits to have the tyre changed], but I was just trying to crawl around and finish the race. I was having a ball until I flat-spotted the tyre.''
Stoner rued that the main lesson he took away from his high-profile car racing debut was to recognise the signs of an imminent tyre failure. ''It was definitely a learning experience,'' he said. ''It taught me to not keep going around with that much vibration [coming from the tyre]. But in general, I actually had a ball in those first laps because I could actually drive the car how I wanted to.
''Being around other cars and getting used to looking in the mirrors, honestly, was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be.''
Stoner, 27, is racing in V8 Supercars' seven-event development series in a trial run for a possible full-time drive in the main championship next year, driving for the title-winning Triple Eight team's junior Red Bull Racing squad.
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