Stoner calls for gravel trap changes

Although Stoner was not injured when he fell from his Ducati at Turn 2, he believes the type of gravel used at both Losail and Jerez provides inadequate cushioning during accidents.

"I had a crash this evening going into Turn 2, but luckily I wasn't seriously hurt," he said.

"Having said that I think that in the Safety Commission we need to talk about the size of the gravel pieces because here, like at Jerez, they're too big - they're more like rocks than stones and they can hurt you even in a small crash."

The accident had little effect on Stoner's testing programme, as the Australian revealed that the majority of Ducati's work had been done on the opening day, when he was fastest. He took fifth position last night.

"We only had a few things left to test and I'm happy because we've used different configurations on the two bikes and they both worked well," Stoner said.

"Next week during practice we'll decide which setting to use in the race.

"I'm also really happy with the race tyres - the qualifiers could be a bit better but I'm not too worried because they're not the most important tyres of the weekend.

"Now we've got a couple of days to relax after months of testing and then we finally go racing. We're in good shape and I can't wait to get started."

His new teammate Marco Melandri continued to struggle for speed, ending Friday's test 15th fastest and 1.5 seconds slower than Stoner. But the Italian believes he is in better shape than the times suggest.

"I'm happy that the green light is almost ready for the first race because I'm convinced that we have more potential than we're showing right now," he said.