Stoner: I went back to two-year old electronics

Casey Stoner has revealed he took a step back to go forward, in terms of electronics, during his final season at Ducati.

Ducati swapped its 'screamer' engine for a more sedated 'big bang' design at the end of 2009 and the smoother power-delivery meant Stoner was able to strip away the amount of electronic interference.

"At Ducati I went back to an older model of electronics when we got the 'big bang' engine, because I had that much more grip on the bottom of the rev range that I didn't want all the [engine] cuts and this and that to calm the bike down," Stoner told Crash.net.

Electronics were an area of frequent discussion during Stoner's early years at Ducati, with some - including fellow riders - claiming the secret to his amazing success was to rely heavily upon traction control.

But Stoner insisted he used only the minimum required and TV images of the Australian wrestling the bucking and weaving 'screamer' around the track were in contrast to the kind of behavior you would expect from a 'remote controlled' bike.

Certainly, Stoner's decision to switch back to less-advanced electronics indicates that it wasn't an area the #27 felt was critical to his success.

"We went back to what was, by the end of last year, an electronics package that was nearly two years old," revealed Stoner, who won three of his last six races for Ducati.

Stoner has switched to Repsol Honda for 2011, which also means swapping from Magneti Marelli to the in-house electronics package developed by HRC.

Crash.net asked Stoner to compare the two systems, but the 2007 world champion said the rate of development made that difficult.

"Because electronics are always evolving, you can't get a good understanding of how they compare to each other," he said.

"For example, we've tried a different electronics modification at this second Sepang test, and now the electronics feel different compared to even the electronics Honda had used in the past.

"For sure the system they use here at Honda is a bit different to Ducati and I need to spend a little more time with the engineers to understand it and get the most out of it."

This season, each Repsol Honda rider will have two electronic engineers.

Stoner was fastest on all three days at the second Sepang test. The third and final MotoGP pre-season test will be held at Qatar on March 13-14.