Stoner bullish after 'big' step forward

The Australian, who last year scored ten victories on his way to the title, has not won a race since the start of the season and is already 50 points behind championship leader Valentino Rossi following the first seven races of the year.

But the Ducati rider is adamant his team took a very significant step forward in the post-race test at Barcelona, where the Italian squad also tested their 2009 bike.

"The first day we rode most of the new bike to make sure we were happy enough to continue with this bike for next year," said Stoner ahead of this weekend's race in Donington.

"Ducati being a small factory it is too difficult to get the bike out for this year so the next day we concentrated again on the '08 and we found a big improvement with engine management systems, to calm it down a bit and make it easier a bit to ride.

"So rather than shaking and wobbling everywhere we definitely toned it down. Hopefully this circuit will give us a small advantage."

The world champion, third in the Barcelona race after starting from pole, admitted he was expecting more at the Catalan Grand Prix.

But the Australian is now bullish on his chances for the rest of the season following the progress made in Spain.

"We expected a bit more from that race," he added. "Everything had gone wrong but basically we hit the limit of the bike in practice.

"This season has been pretty tough for us. We had enough bad luck in the races that followed the first one and we have started to bring ourselves back up to a more competitive state in the last few races.

"In the Barcelona test we made a big, big step. We took half a second off out laptimes with one improvement so we hope that transfers to all the tracks."