At his very return to the series in Portugal, Stoner managed to cross the finish line in 2nd place despite raising several concerns about his level of fitness prior to the start of the event. Now that two weeks have passed since the Estoril round, the Aussie firmly believes he'll improve himself and give his home fans something to cheer about on Sunday.
“To still be able to put in a low 1m37s on the last lap of the race was such a good feeling - we haven't had that in such a long time. When we think about it, we've had this problem for a lot longer than we thought we did, it just really made itself show in a hot race like Catalunya, and from then on we just struggled,” said Stoner in a preview for the Australian GP.
“We trained again after Estoril and felt 100 per cent, no problem. So we definitely feel like we're in better condition than in Portugal, and hopefully we can get in a little bit better condition before we hit Valencia,” added the Ducati rider.
In addition to his high level of confidence prior to the Phillip Island round, Stoner also believes Ducati has moved into the right direction during the past couple of months and caught up with Yamaha in terms of bike development.
“We know our package works a lot better here than it does in Portugal, and even in Portugal it was fantastic. So we'll see what we can pull off this weekend, and hopefully we can be running up front. It's nice that we can come back and know that we've got a chance of winning the next three races,” concluded Stoner.
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