Stoner bemoans traffic issues at Assen

The Australian, who qualified fourth for Saturday's grand prix, was baulked on his final flying lap in what he claims is a growing trend for riders to slow down seeking space on the circuit to get a clear qualifying run of their own.

"Unfortunately a couple of riders got in my way, waiting for a two in a dangerous and fast part of the track," he said, "which obviously cost me time but could have cost me a whole lot more if I had crashed.

"It is a frustrating situation which seems to be happening more and more in MotoGP and it is about time something was done to stop it."

Stoner had been in contention for pole until the last ten minutes of the hour-long session, but was nearly the victim of a massive high-side thanks to a temperamental rear tyre.

"We've been very fast on race tyres and even though we're normally good for a single qualifying lap on a soft tyre we've had a few issues here," he said. "With my second soft tyre I was up out of the seat a couple of times but we changed it and the next one was a lot better.

"Thankfully I'm starting from fourth on the grid, which I am fine with because I can still challenge at the front from there and with the times we set today there is no reason not to be confident."

Team-mate Nicky Hayden's difficulties continued on the sister factory Ducati as the American qualified a lowly 13th.

"Unfortunately qualifying is not our strong point at the moment but we made some improvements with the bike in free practice this morning," said Hayden. "We changed the transmission, which helped a bit, and made a few more tweaks that made the general feeling of the bike a bit better but for the afternoon we tried some stuff that didn't work so well.

"We had to go back to what we had this morning and I was only able to go a little bit faster, which is why the qualifying position isn't great. The cooler track today made it hard to get heat into the left-hand side of the tyre.

"You don't get good balance with the single compound tyres around here, for me at least, the right side is really good but it's hard to get heat into the left."