Stoner pleased with starting point

Friday, 9 April 2010

The Ducati Marlboro rider was satisfied with his performance in the first practice in Qatar, but has underlined the need to continue to work hard as the weekend progresses.

The Losail International Circuit is a track at which Casey Stoner has a proven pedigree of success, and the Australian is going for a fourth successive win in the season opener at the venue this weekend. On Friday evening he started the Commercialbank Grand Prix of Qatar weekend in solid style, topping Free Practice 1 with the fastest time by over half a second from Jorge Lorenzo.

Stoner’s lap of 1’55.500 on his Desmosedici GP10 of the Ducati Marlboro team was a fraction over a tenth of a second off the time which saw him top the Official Test three weeks earlier, and displayed an immediate comfort with his bike at the start of the opening round of the 2010 season.

The 2007 World Champion is pleased with how well things have started in Qatar, and explained that he in fact achieved better times with a setting on his prototype which was not the most comfortable.

“Everything started off very well tonight; we got a quite good feeling with the bike early on. When we changed the setting I actually did not prefer the feeling of it, but the lap time was better,” said the 24 year-old.

“Now we’re trying to get a bit more balance in the bike to get a little better understanding of it, and still be able to do those lap times.”

Far from becoming complacent with his strong display on Friday evening, Stoner is instead preparing to work increasingly harder in preparation for Sunday’s season-opening race.

“We’re quite happy with where we are at the moment but I believe everybody will catch up over the weekend, so we definitely need to stay on top of our game and try and improve our set-up a little more,” concluded Stoner.