Assen MotoGP: Casey Stoner confident after third straight pole

Reigning world champion Casey Stoner will start as red-hot favourite for tomorrow’s Dutch MotoGP after he claimed his third successive pole position in Assen.

Continuing his devastating return to form since testing a revised engine management system in Barcelona earlier this month, Stoner has been unstoppable on race tyres in Holland and he was quick enough to top qualifying today.

A best time of 1.35.520 claimed pole by just 0.032secs from Dani Pedrosa and the 22-year-old said: “We have had a few issues today so I am really pleased to be on pole. Things have not gone perfect and this morning when it kept going between wet and dry we missed out a little bit.

“I was a bit nervous getting onto the qualifiers because we had not done many laps to understand the set-up and whether it was right. I was okay on the first tyre but the second tyre was one step softer and the one I was confident I could do a good time on.

“But we only had one in the allocation and on my lap I made a few mistakes and didn’t think it would be enough. I could have gone quite a bit faster but on my last tyre I had no expectations at all.

“It was harder and more difficult to ride with but we stayed on pole position. Before we put the qualifiers in we had a problem with the lap time transmitter and I didn’t know how fast I was going.

“Luckily Dorna managed to fix it before we put the qualifying tyres in and I was feeling confident, but the extra grip offered by the softer rear put even more pressure on the front and I almost lost it on several occasions during the last three laps.

“To have qualified on pole despite all those things is fantastic! This afternoon was a lot windier than yesterday and the rain this morning meant that the track conditions weren’t at their optimum, the front was pushing in a lot of corners where you really have to rely on it, so that made life ten times more difficult than it should be.”