HRC boss Shuhei Nakamoto has revealed that a lack of test time and not being able to find a crew chief prevented Casey Stoner’s return to MotoGP at the Austin round after the former champion approached Honda to replace Dani Pedrosa.

Stoner retired from the premier class at the end of 2012 because he was fed up with all the peripheral work and politics that surrounded his job but will race for HRC at the Suzuka Eight-Hours in July.

Nakamoto-san said that he had asked Stoner to return many times for wildcard rides as the Australian is a VIP for the company but this time there was not the time or resources to find a crew chief as his former right-hand man Christian Gabbarini now works with Jack Miller and Pedrosa’s chief Ramon Aurin hasn’t worked with Stoner.

“Casey approach Honda for the Dani situation as he wanted to help the team. To be honest I was surprised but happy. We had a call in Japan about this. All of HRC said it was important we agree. If Casey race again in MotoGP, a podium should be the target,” said Nakamoto-san, speaking at Austin.

“For Casey, of this I have no doubt, as he is very fast but he would need a good setup and we couldn’t find a crew chief as Christian is working with Jack and Ramon is a good engineer but he has never worked with Casey, so it was a big question mark to us.

“I don’t want to see Casey fighting for sixth position, he must fight for the podium. I couldn’t find the confidence our side. I understand that he is disappointed. Many times I have asked him to come back, do the wildcards. If we have a time to have a test before he race, then we say yes but we have no time before this.”