Stoner still bullish about title prospects

The reigning champion has had a lean time since winning the Qatar season-opener - going off the road twice at Jerez, being hampered by a loose on-board camera at Estoril, finishing a distant and unhappy third in China, then taking 16th on his wet-tyre-shod spare bike following an engine glitch at Le Mans today.

Those results have dropped Stoner to fourth in the championship, 41 points adrift of double winner Rossi, but the Australian believes he can regain the lost ground.

"It's a very big gap, especially now we've done five races," he acknowledged. "But we've still got a long way to go. We were world champions last year and it's our job to defend it again this year.

"But from my point of view - I'm trying to win the world championship, not defend it. All we can do is always do our best and try to not let these type of things happen again."

He said there would be no change to his approach even though he now has to chase down the points leaders.

"We've still got to score points. If it's 'win or bust', you're not going to get anywhere if you keep busting," Stoner said.

And he insisted that he is just as competitive as he had been in 2007, when he won ten races and took the title with three rounds to spare, but has lacked the good fortune he enjoyed last season.

"I'm just as strong. The last few races, we've struggled. But we also had some bad luck," said Stoner.

"Things haven't gone our way. If those things hadn't happened, nothing would look as bad as it does. We were fighting for a podium today. I believe if everything had gone a little bit better, we would've been on the podium.

"I think I'm fighting just as well as I did last year. Nothing's changed."

Stoner was much happier in France after Ducati reverted to an older set-up on his bike. He felt that some of the team's recent developments may have been a backwards step.

"At the beginning of the season everything was really good and we tried to continue development," he said. "Maybe we would have been better off where we were.

"The characteristic of the bike in China and Portugal was making it a little bit difficult to ride.

"We went back to what we had at the start of the season, with some old parts, some new parts, and some parts that we've already tested, and it definitely gave us back that feeling that we wanted and it was working really well.

"We had to come back and make everything a little bit more smooth. Once we'd done that, the bike felt a lot better to ride. For a couple of races, we couldn't seem to find that last little bit we needed. But this weekend, until the race, the bike was working really well."