Casey Stoner oozing confidence ahead of season opener

Casey Stoner signed off his 2011 winter testing preparations in emphatic style last night in Qatar, the Repsol Honda dominating the timesheets to cement his status as overwhelming pre-season favourite.

Stoner’s switch to Honda’s new 2011 RC212V has been a dream so far and a 1.55.681 last night saw him head the field from Spanish team-mate Dani Pedrosa by just 0.064s.

The pair were locked in their own private duel for the bragging rights at HRC and Pedrosa was the only other rider to lap inside of 0.5s of 2007 world champion Stoner.

Ben Spies was third fastest on the factory Yamaha YZR-M1 but he was 0.614s adrift as Stoner was the quickest and most consistent rider again on a windswept final night in Doha.

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Having topped the timesheets at the previous test in Sepang last month, Stoner told MCN that he was feeling confident about his title prospects when the new season gets underway in Qatar on Sunday night.

He told MCN: “Four years ago when I won the title I thought maybe we could get some podiums and maybe win a race but we ended up winning the championship. The last three years we’ve gone into the season with a definite shot of winning it and I’ve fought for it every year. Last year was the worst chance but we can go into this season with high hopes that we can at least challenge for it. If I don’t win it then at least I want to be fighting for and to have such a good pre-season, I can’t ask for more.”

Stoner confirmed he’d finalised the riding position he was going to start the 2011 campaign on having experimented again last night with different set-ups.
He said: “We moved weight back in Sepang to try and get a little bit more grip in the middle of the turn because it was an issue there. But at this track we don’t have to put our weight quite as far back, so we’ve gone in more of neutral position like the first test in Sepang and it seems to be working well.  I’ve been happy with my consistency and I can do high 55s and low 56s every time I go out on track. To go faster than that we need to improve the set-up. Looking at the other laps times their consistency seems to be more middle 56s and low 57s at best. We’ve got to be happy with where we’re at but we can’t worry about everybody else.”