2007 MotoGP World Champion Casey Stoner’s 2009 season hinges on his wrist his left wrist. The Australian had surgery on the wrist over the winter, but that surgery may have been too little too late, leaving Stoner with wrist problems that may continue to hinder him throughout 2009 and beyond. Stoner broke the scaphoid bone in his left wrist in 2003, when he was racing in the 125cc World Championships. The bone, which is notoriously slow and difficult to heal due to a lack of blood supply, was stapled together in a surgical procedure, but the fracture re-opened last year while Stoner was competing at Misano. With the 2008 MotoGP World Championship still within his grasp, Stoner disregarded the advice of at least one noted orthopedic surgeon who advised that Stoner undergo immediate surgery to reduce the risk of necrosis and long-term problems. After declining to have surgery in the middle of the season, Stoner continued to compete, in significant pain. Stoner suffered uncharacteristic crashes in the second half of 2008, and Valentino Rossi won the World Championship. Stoner had surgery to repair the scaphoid fracture in Europe last October, but found the wrist to be worse than he expected when he returned to testing earlier this month at Sepang. The young racer was fastest overall at that test, but his fastest lap times were overshadowed by pain and a lack of mobility in Stoner’s left wrist. That pain limited him to short stints, prevented him from doing any long runs or race simulations and left him very frustrated. “The wrist is giving me a lot of problems and I can’t manage more than two or three laps at a time, so it’s difficult to work on set-up because I’m having to break off too often,” Stoner was quoted as saying in a press release issued by his team on the second day of the three-day test in Malaysia. “We’ve still managed to do some work on improving the feeling on the GP9, with some changes to the rear set-up that have improved the bike in the area we were suffering the most. Now it is much easier to ride. I still can’t ride how I want though and we really need to string a run of consistent laps together, although I know that if I can get a little closer to 100% fitness that problem will be resolved.” In a recent interview posted on the official MotoGP website, Ducati Project Manager Livio Suppo said, “He will have to work hard on his wrist. It won’t be easy for him, but he has the character to do it. We have to wait and see what happens in Qatar [the next scheduled MotoGP test]; hopefully the circuit is less physically demanding for the riders and better for him than Sepang.”