Stoner expected times to crumble

The Australian also revealed that he used a tyre exactly the same as 12 months earlier when he dominated the same race en route to his first win in MotoGP.

"As soon as we tested I did a 1:55.3 straight away and we knew that the colder conditions were working at this circuit," said Stoner.

"I knew that the race time would be a lot quicker and that the lap record would be blown to smithereens."

"Believe it or not it's the same race tyre that I used last year during the race. I think that is quite funny that we can set a lap record again with a track temperature difference of 30 degrees between 45 degrees last year and 15 degrees this year. We also had some other tyres that we were considering using but we decided to go with this one."

The Ducati rider also emphasised a key element in his approach to race tactics.

"We've worked really hard to have a tyre left at the end of the race," he said.

Now in the second year of the 800cc regulations with a 21 litre fuel limit, he revealed that he didn't need all of the electronic settings available to him on the bike.

"We only used two fuel maps today. The first one I ran was lighting the rear up too much. I would have liked to have gone to the lowest map at the end of the race, but I was still pulling away and I had a good feeling with that setting so I left it."

Stoner has three different fuel map settings to utilise with the Ducati GP8.