"At the moment no man on earth is capable of doing what Casey Stoner is doing. On the other hand, it's difficult to understand why Marco is struggling so much."

He declined to comment on whether the Italian would be replaced by Sete Gibernau at Brno.

Suppo also criticized the scoring system in grand prix racing, which awards points down to 15th place.

It means that in the 17-bike race at the Sachsenring - Kawasaki's John Hopkins is out due to injury - there only have to be two falls or retirements and every finisher is guaranteed championship points. Even when there's an 18-bike grid it's hardly difficult to pick up a point or two.

"This is my opinion and not Ducati's, but it would be more than enough if the points were restricted to the top ten finishers," he said. "It just makes more sense when there are only 18 starters."

Asked why Ducati - the smallest factory competing in MotoGP - was able to field four bikes when Suzuki and Kawasaki put only two on the grid, he said he had raised the matter at a meeting of the MSMA (the Motorcycle Sports Manufacturers' Association).

He was told that because some of the factories are constantly developing their machines, they don't feel confident enough to supply bikes to satellite teams.

But because of its small size and limited resources, Ducati operates a different policy with its Alice partners.

"We don't have any updates throughout the season for the satellite bikes. That is our tradition," he said.

Those words contradict comments from the Alice Team this weekend, which stated that its GP8s had been updated and were now 'exactly the same' as the factory bikes.