Stoner confident he can keep momentum

The Australian, who bounced back to form last weekend by scoring his second victory of the season in the British Grand Prix, says that a smaller fairing on the Ducati GP8 and a better understanding of the bike will give him extra confidence in Holland.

"It would be nice to do something similar or at least fight for the lead," he said. "We are coming into this race with a bit more confidence than we had last year, when we were struggling a little bit in the wind.

"Now we have got the smaller fairing and Donington was a real boost for us. The last test in Barcelona and Donington, just proved to us that this system is really working well and we hope that it works here.

"We will have to wait until tomorrow morning to really understand if things have progressed as well as we thought at the last round."

Stoner added that it was too soon to know for sure whether Ducati's temperamental GP8 would work as well at Assen as it did in Donington, but paid tribute to his team for rediscovering their competitiveness after a number of races where they struggled for pace.

"You can have an idea very early on if it is going to work for the whole weekend, but if it doesn't work immediately we are going to keep trying and see what solutions we can come up with," he said.

"We have had to fight hard at quite a few races this year to try and find a solution, and Donington just seemed to really flow together.

"Didn't matter whether it was wet or dry, everything was working very well and that is a big credit to the team."

Stoner also echoed rival Valentino Rossi's comments by lamenting that the safety changes made to the Assen layout had taken away some of the legendary circuit's personality.

"Every year, since they made the modifications, you will never get back what this circuit had, but like Valentino said the last part of the circuit is a little bit similar," he said. "But they still took some parts away that were a lot of fun. It is still really good for racing.

"There is not as many passing places now, but there always seems to be close racing at the front."