Stoner hoped for more progress

Although the former champion had been fastest in opening practice on Friday, he did not feel he had made enough progress since then.

"This morning we were reasonably happy but still needed a few tenths," said Stoner after qualifying third. "We've basically gone back to the exact same setting we hit the track with yesterday afternoon. It's not always the best position to be in, but we've still got quite a bit to work on.

"It was good enough to get us on the front row, which I'm really happy about because I didn't expect it, but I thought we would've progressed a bit further than where we are at this stage. So we're going to have to try a few things in the morning and hopefully run across something."

Despite his slight disappointment, Stoner still felt Jerez was turning out better than usual for him.

"In general the bike's working a lot better than it ever has around here," he said. "We generally feel more confident for the race than we ever have.

"I'm just not happy with the fact that we haven't really progressed with our set-up, we haven't really improved at all over the weekend, so we've got a lot of work to do tonight. But we'll see what happens tomorrow - anything can happen."