Stoner not satisfied with fitness yet

The Ducati rider dominated tonight's postponed Losail race, winning the season-opener for the third straight year. Although his wrist, which underwent surgery to cure a long-term problem during the winter, functioned well during the grand prix, he admitted that his general fitness levels were not as good as he wanted yet.

"It was a very, very difficult race, physically I've still got a long way to go," Stoner told the BBC.

"My wrist is fine, I had no problems with that, but I need a little bit more physical training before I'm back to what I was. But concentration wise, I was good."

Even with his slight lack of fitness, Stoner reckoned he was in a better state than when struggling with his wrist issue last autumn.

"I feel that I'm stronger now than I was at the end of last year," he said in the post-race press conference. "My wrist has come back to close enough 100 per cent for everyday life, but definitely 100 per cent for riding."

He also revealed that the 22-hour delay before the race start had worked to his advantage, allowing Ducati to try a set-up tweak in the additional warm-up session held earlier this evening.

"We found it difficult with these short sessions to find a decent set-up, and going into the race last night we weren't too confident with the set-up we had," said Stoner.

"But we got to test it in the warm-up this evening and everything was working really well so we were a little bit more confident for the race tonight."

He added that racing on Monday evening had been a very different experience.

"It's strange," Stoner said. "Having all this rain last night, today we weren't really ready to race. The build-up was over the weekend, and today I was a lot more relaxed than I normally am."

Tonight's victory means Stoner has won in Qatar every year since joining Ducati in 2007, having also taken pole at the track in his rookie year with LCR Honda in 2006. He reckons his style is particularly well suited to the Losail circuit.

"It's somewhere where the grip's not the best, and I don't mind the bike moving around a little bit from my dirt track years when I was younger," he said.