Stoner insists title win still not certain

The Ducati rider's third consecutive race win coincided with an engine failure for his title rival Valentino Rossi. Stoner can now clinch his first championship if he outscores Rossi by 15 points in the next race at Estoril.

"It would be great if we could win the championship but we still have five races to go, so we have to stay focused and stay like we are now, and maybe we can win the championship a little bit earlier than we expect," Stoner told Italia1 television.

"But we're still not certain to win the championship. Mathematically it's not secure.

"But this is my dream and I hope we can make this happen."

Stoner has now won eight of this season's 13 races and pledged to keep pushing for more victories in the remaining four rounds.

"Already the title was close before this race, but still I want to go out and win races because that's why we race," he said.

"The championship is the bonus at the end, but we have many races until then, so I want to try and win as many possible."

He said he was particularly pleased to win at Misano having failed to convert pole to victory in the previous Italian round at Mugello.

"The Ducati factory is not so far away, and the first race in Italy didn't go so well for us, we had a little bit of problems, so this weekend I tried really hard to get the set-up right and we were able to stay in front," Stoner said.

Suzuki riders Chris Vermeulen and John Hopkins were able to keep pace with the leading Ducati at first, but Stoner said he always felt he had a tyre advantage that would pay off in the second half of the race. Stoner ultimately won by 4.8 seconds over Vermeulen, with Hopkins falling away by 16 seconds in third.

"Chris and John put a lot of pressure on me for a long time, they were really fast, but we understood also that we had the hardest compound tyres and we were able to pull away at the front," Stoner said.