Stoner: tyre wear will be critical

The world championship leader feels that the nature of the corners on the Spanish track and the higher corner speeds of the 800cc bikes for this year will make life very difficult for tyres during the race.

"There are some very long corners on this circuit," he said. "With the 800s running higher corner speed I think the tyres are going to struggle a little bit.

The Australian believes that he will need to take a measured approach to the race, to make sure that he does not lose out to Valentino Rossi in the championship standings.

"I'll definitely be keeping my wits about me to try and claw some points back this weekend," he added.

Stoner also admitted that he wasn't too disappointed with his result in Italy last weekend, but he blamed himself for losing third place to Alex Barros near the end.

"We went to Mugello with the understanding that it wasn't going to be our best race, so we did the best we could," he said.

"The bike was good enough for the podium, but I just didn't ride well enough in the last few laps.

"We scored some good points though, and considering our run of results we can't complain. The whole season so far has been dream come true."