Stoner upbeat about improved pace

The Australian, who has scored just one victory so far this year, confirmed his improved pace following a breakthrough in performance at the post-race test in Barcelona.

Stoner admitted he had found something that had made his bike more competitive right away and the Ducati rider showed it was no fluke after dominating proceedings at Donington today.

"I'm really pleased with today," said Stoner. "In the past few rounds we've had trouble getting power to the ground - every time I opened the throttle the bike wanted to buck and that made the chassis look a lot worse than it really was.

"The bike has never been slow and we've been running for podiums, which isn't bad, but we always felt there was something missing.

"In the Barcelona test we tried something with the electronics that both (test rider) Vitto (Guareschi) and myself really liked straight away. It is great to see that the improvement has transferred here to Donington and I believe there is still more to come yet.

"I'm not sure if this change to the electronics will have such a major effect in wet conditions because that is more to do with adapting your set-up to get weight on the rear but we already have a good wet setting anyway so I'm confident we can be competitive whatever the weather decides to do."

Teammate Marco Melandri continued with his problems on the GP8 bike, the Italian finishing down in 14th place.

Despite that, Melandri felt he had made a positive start to the weekend.

"This weekend as started out in a more positive fashion," he said. "We started with two similar bikes, both with a fairly good setting and we continued to work by making small changes and testing tyres. We found something that worked well so I'm quite happy. We hope that the weather stays favourable tomorrow so that we can continue working.

"Track conditions were good today, they've 'roughed up' a couple of sections that were slippery and there are less bumps. The grip seems fine to me and it's good to say that we can at least compete in dry conditions. I remember last year that in the wet it got really slippery but we'll have to wait and see what happens if it rains tomorrow."