Injury hampers Stoner's progress in race

The dethroned 2007 champion is set to have an operation on a fractured scaphoid bone in November, and admitted the injury is having an affect on his performance.

"I had no feeling whatsoever from my injured hand today, it just wasn't working," he said. "It meant I had to put all the pressure on to my right hand and in such physically demanding conditions it was really difficult.

"It started cramping up and I couldn't even get the throttle fully open down the straights."

Stoner added that his plight was compounded by setup problems on the factory Ducati GP8, which he claimed have troubled him all weekend at Sepang.

"To be honest I don't think we quite found a perfect set-up this weekend but I can't complain about that because I wasn't able to push the bike to the limit today," he said. "It's been a tough weekend and we have another one coming up at Valencia, which we will push hard to get through with as good a result as possible before finally looking ahead to the operation.

"At least we have the runner-up spot already in the bag, which is an achievement I think myself and the whole team can look back on and be very proud of."

Teammate Marco Melandri had yet another race to forget, finishing 16th, with only Suzuki test rider Nobuatsu Aoki behind him.

"There are only negatives to take out of a race like that," said the despondent Italian. "We went back to the settings we used yesterday afternoon but I didn't have the same feeling.

"I had hardly any feeling with the front from the first few laps and I couldn't brake hard into the corners. From then on things just got worse.

"I went for a softer rear tyre so the grip was good at the start but I almost crashed a couple of times in the fast corners in the second half of the race and that took away any shred of confidence I had left."