Australia MotoGP: Jorge Lorenzo focussed only on beating Pedrosa

Stoner followed up his domination of practice with a comfortable pole position on Saturday. Despite an early crash, the Australian beat Lorenzo by half a second.

But second place would allow Lorenzo to seal the 2012 title, as would any frontrunning finish ahead of championship rival Dani Pedrosa.

Lorenzo said he would try and measure his pace using Stoner in the race, but that his focus would be on Pedrosa, not the polesitting Honda.

"Casey is unbeatable this weekend if nothing strange happens," said Yamaha rider Lorenzo.

"So for everybody the target is to get as close to him as possible, but mainly for me to try to get second place in front of Dani.

"It's important to get a good start and use the reference of Casey to be as fast as I can be."

Although Lorenzo has led the standings since May's French GP, his once-38-point advantage has been whittled down to 23 by Pedrosa's string of recent wins.

He admitted that now he is just keen to get the championship in the bag before the season finale at Valencia in a fortnight.

"Tomorrow is a very important day," said Lorenzo. "We'll try to keep calm and not make any mistakes."