Thursday, 1st May 2008

Reigning MotoGP world champion Casey Stoner says it's too early to be counting points - and that at this stage of the season a return to winning races is his main priority.

"Things haven't gone well for us in the last two races, but the season started strong, we had very good pre-season testing and I'm expecting to pick up the pace again in these next few races," he declared confidently.

Stoner clinched a memorable victory over Rossi at Shanghai last year, when his powerful Desmosedici proved devastatingly effective along the 1.2km back straight, but overall Casey thinks the layout lacks excitement.

"The circuit is not too bad, in the wet the grip is unbelievable, but the track itself has a lot of tight technical corners that on a bike are more of a pain than anything," he said. "There's a few fast corners that are a lot of fun coming onto the back straight, but immediately after that is one of the tightest corners in grand prix. Just a lot of difficult twisty corners that don't make it a lot of fun."

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First free practice takes place at Shanghai on Friday.

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