Stoner says Ducati are still improving

Stoner now holds a 60-point championship lead, and has won seven of this year's 12 rounds, with two of his most dominant victories coming in the most recent Grands Prix in America and the Czech Republic.

Ducati stayed on for two days of testing after the Brno race, and Stoner believes the team made a further breakthrough during the session.

"We made a few steps forward I think, and also with the chassis we tried a few different things and a couple of different settings, and things seemed to go really well," Stoner said in the pre-race press conference at Misano.

"Right at the end of the day, in the last five laps, we changed the setting in the chassis and I felt a big improvement, and we just left it at that.

"We were happy with what we'd done, and hopefully in these next races we can see that improvement in the chassis."

The Australian is unsure how he will fare at the heavily-revised Misano track, which is returning to the MotoGP schedule this season after a 14-year absence.

"It looks like a pretty tricky circuit, it looks very technical and very tight, so we'll have to wait and see what happens," Stoner said.

Although he rode the new layout at a Ducati promotional event earlier in the season, he had learned little from the demonstration.

"I did an out-lap and an in-lap, and didn't really get any information from that," said Stoner.

"I just found it quite bumpy. I've heard they've resurfaced a couple of points that were quite rough, but even so when I was going around on the scooter I still felt quite a lot of bumps on the circuit. We'll have to see how the MotoGP bikes handle that."