Stoner bullish despite qualifying crash

The Ducati rider will start third at Misano, behind Honda's Dani Pedrosa and Yamaha's Jorge Lorenzo, and had a low-speed fall at Turn 4 early in the session.

However he is very confident for the race having reverted to older specification forks today after struggling in practice.

"Yesterday we were working a lot with the new forks and we couldn't get any feeling with them," said Stoner. "We were wondering why we were so far from the pace.

"Straight away when we went to bike two today with the old forks, immediately we went a second quicker - literally from jumping off one bike to the next without any more effort.

"So we're looking a lot more comfortable for the race tomorrow. We worked on quite a few things in qualifying to get the feeling better."

He played down the crash, which had when the front end slid away as he slowed for Turn 4 20 minutes into qualifying, just after he had taken provisional pole.

"I did one lap which was relatively smooth and everything went so well, I thought 'okay, we'll push a little bit harder' on the next lap," Stoner explained. "I tried to run a little bit too much speed. It was only a small crash on a tight corner.

"For tomorrow we're looking a lot more comfortable than we have in the past, for sure.

"We're still behind Dani and Jorge. But we're optimistic for tomorrow, let's see what can happen. Hopefully get another podium."