Stoner thrilled about Ducati's form

The Australian, winner of the British Grand Prix last weekend, continued to show he is back in form following the breakthrough in performance at the post-race test in Barcelona.

Stoner was quickest in the morning session by six tenths and topped the times by 0.7 seconds in the afternoon.

The world champion was pleased to see the set-up changes continued to work, and claimed he felt the GP8 bike is finally better than last year's machine.

"We're very happy with the fact we've come to another circuit and the new set-up is working as well as it did at Catalunya and Donington," said Stoner. "There don't seem to be any bad points to it and it is helping me ride like I want to again.

"I'm able to use harder compound tyres again and I'm just getting a better feel for the whole bike in general, without it bucking and weaving everywhere. We had a couple of moments today where it thought about trying to spit me but nothing to worry about.

"If you watch the race last year you can see the bike moving around a lot and we were struggling, whereas if you saw me ride today you can see what a huge step forward we've taken.

"In fact, maybe with the exception of Donington, this is probably the first time since Qatar where I can say that this bike is better than last year's. Today we've gone faster than the pole record on a race tyre so we're delighted with how everything is coming together."

Teammate Marco Melandri had another dismal day, finishing three seconds off the pace of Stoner.

"At the moment it is not looking good," he said. "This afternoon we tried to load the front up a little more to improve the steering and feeling in the fast corners but we lost a bit of grip on the rear and in the end the bike was harder to ride.

"We took a step backwards with the setting at the end and I did two runs where I rediscovered the feeling I had this morning. However, at the moment we're still a long way off finding the solution to our problems."