Out-going MotoGP world champion Casey Stoner has admitted his future is under threat if he does not have an operation on his injured wrist. The Ducati rider has been hampered in recent races after aggravating an old fracture to the scaphoid in his right wrist in a practice crash at Misano in August.
And while the 22-year-old Australian plans to wait until the season's end to undergo surgery, he says it is essential procedure if he is to return to the kind of form that won him the world title in 2007.
"We have to have an operation, if we don't then it could be our career over so it's disappointing that five years after getting an operation, that it starts to flair up now," he said. "But in some ways we are lucky it did show us what the real problem was and that we weren't just ignoring it, only to find a bigger problem later on.
"It's better for us to get it fixed at the end of this season, it's going to take three months to come good, but we should have that amount of time before testing starts again next year and then we should be a little bit more competitive."
Stoner added that he was not in any significant pain, but that the injury drained his strength on more physical circuits, such as this weekend's Phillip Island venue, in Australia.
"Pain-wise it's fine, it's just a weakness from change of direction and things like that," he said. "I'm a little bit worried about this weekend to see how many laps we can do in the race before I start getting tired.
"But if I feel comfortable and the bike is working well than that should make things easier so we are going to have to work really hard just to try and set the bike up.
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