Stoner disappointed to miss pole

The Australian was dominant for much of qualifying too, only to be pipped by Marco Simoncelli right at the end - leaving Stoner to rue a small set-up issue.

"I'm a little bit disappointed this afternoon in qualifying," said Stoner.

"We've been working well all weekend and race pace-wise we've been getting better and better. I feel pretty comfortable with the bike on old tyres.

"When we went to the softer rubber this afternoon, we just had no edge grip. It nearly threw me over the handlebars a few times. We just couldn't get any temperature into the side of the tyre. It seems to be something we tried with that set-up that wasn't working.

"I'm a little bit disappointed because all we did was change the inner pressure and that definitely wasn't the right way to go. I'm a little bit frustrated with that."

But Stoner is very confident that he will be in better form for the race.

"We know for race pace tomorrow we can basically do what we did in qualifying, so we're pretty happy," he said.

Although both Friday sessions had been affected by rain, Stoner said there had been enough track time today to catch up on what was lost.

"Yesterday definitely wasn't the best day for us to find any real race set-up." he said.

"Conditions were 50/50 in both sessions and we never really got any set-up time.

"But today has been quite valuable - the weather hasn't been too bad, conditions this morning were quite warm, so the track was working well."