With three wins from the four previous rounds Casey Stoner is a rider in form and the Ducati Team rider will be aiming to deliver the Bologna factory it’s first MotoGP win at the Estoril circuit in this weekend’s Grande Premio de Portugal.
Stoner finished second in last year’s race – Ducati’s best premier class result at Estoril to date – and comes into Round 17 off the back of a dominant victory in his home GP at Phillip Island last time out.
“I have had a mixture of different results at Estoril - some good like my first 250cc win in 2005 and a podium in 2007, some not so good like when we had a problem with the on-board camera in 2008. Then we were back on the podium again in 2009,” said the 25 year-old. “I was fast there last year but Jorge (Lorenzo) was a little faster. He is very strong at this circuit and I think we can expect him to be so again next Sunday.”
Stoner continued: “We just have to focus on the job of setting the bike up. We know that there are a lot of bumps here and our bike usually reacts quite aggressively over bumps, so we will have to see if we can adapt the set up. The GP10 has worked well in all kinds of conditions over the last few races so we're pretty confident.”
Across the garage team-mate Nicky Hayden was on the pace all weekend at Phillip Island and missed out on a podium place by less than four-tenths of a second. The American is hopeful that he can mark the end of his 2010 campaign with a strong finish and improve on his Championship position of seventh in the last two rounds.
“The end of the season is on the horizon but we have two races left to do well in so it's now or never as far as this season is concerned,” he said. “Estoril is pretty normal, there's nothing really special about the track apart from a very fast section onto the back straight and then towards the end of the lap there's a chicane which I think is the slowest in MotoGP. The track is very tight, which makes it demanding, and given that the circuit is close to the ocean, like Phillip Island, you usually get wind and changeable weather. In any case we are ready for any conditions and looking to finish the season in a positive way."
Source: http://www.motogp.com