Stoner delighted with 'perfect start'

The reigning World Champion had a quiet start from fourth and kept position until one third through the race, when he overtook three rivals on the same lap to take the lead and opened a gap to win by over five seconds.

"This is the perfect start, but it's not everything," the Ducati Marlboro rider told Italia1 television.

"The first race does not mean you win the championship, but for sure it helps a lot. The next couple of tracks are not perfect for our package but I think we can try to minimize the damage, maybe we can do better than we expect, but we'll see what happens."

"I thought the race would be much more difficult for us today. At the beginning I didn't have such a good feeling with the bike, everything wasn't working so well, and once everybody else started to come down a little bit then we started to realize we could go to the front.

"So I decided to push to the front a little bit more and we were able to pull an advantage. But for sure, everyone was riding really well, all the rookies were riding unbelievable. But for sure it was a little bit scary in the first laps.

"It was fantastic today to come out and win the first race again, especially in such a battle like this. In the beginning the race was crazy, it was unbelievable, but also a lot of fun to watch."

Asked if winning by five seconds is something special, Stoner replied: "For me it's quite good, also because it reminds us and the team why we are world champions and why we are able to run at the front.

"I think a lot of people didn't expect us to be so fast today. You know, there were a lot of people running some pretty good times. We were fast in practice but our tyres were not perfect. I think they work a bit better in warmer conditions."