Stoner: Pole not worth the risk

The Australian, who has struggled with illness for several weeks, sat out the final minutes of the session and was still able to hold on to a front row spot.

"We didn't have enough time to change any more settings on the bike and it really started to get too dangerous out there," said Stoner.

"I lost the front a couple of times coming down the hill, not really where everybody else was going down. And I just thought, it's not really worth the risk for a qualifying lap.

"The race is tomorrow, we can make some changes and see if we can improve the setting. The bike felt reasonably good, we can definitely improve it and I could have gone quite a bit faster at one point in the session, maybe even at the end, but it would've been too much of a risk for me.

"It was better to start the race in one piece, not injured, and as you saw a lot of riders went down, it was very difficult conditions."

Stoner admitted that Ducati still had a lot of work to do to get on Yamaha's pace in Germany, especially in the wet.

"If it's like this tomorrow then for sure we need to improve the bike a little bit, because Valentino [Rossi] and Jorge [Lorenzo] look like they're a train on the tracks," he told Italia1.

"They're not moving, they're not making any mistakes and the bike looks perfect. So it's very, very difficult to beat them at the moment, but we'll see what we're capable of tomorrow."