Stoner frustrated by electronic glitch

The champion had still looked set for his sixth pole of the year until Dani Pedrosa slipped ahead in the closing moments of the session.

Stoner felt the electrical issue had cost him a significant amount of time on his flying lap.

"Unfortunately our electronics system was making a lot of problems," Stoner said.

"Every time I hit a bump, it would cut out and it was really ruining all my exits onto the straights.

"I was a little bit disappointed in that. I felt we could've gone quite a lot faster. It's similar to Phillip Island, we just lucked out."

But the Australian remains extremely confident about his race pace, and believes his Bridgestone tyres will cope well with both the hot conditions and the much-criticised new track surface.

"We're using the hardest compound anyway, so it hasn't made too many issues," said Stoner. "We're still able to run some pretty good, consistent laps on the race tyre anyway.

"I think our race set-up's looking pretty good. We're feeling quite confident and the bike's working really well around here.

"Everything's looking really good for the race tomorrow."