'So far, so good' - Stoner strolls to home pole
Casey Stoner showed no signs of reducing his home Australian MotoGP dominance by taking his eleventh pole of the 2011 season by almost half a second on Saturday.
Fastest in ever session so far this weekend, Stoner looks on course for a fifth consecutive Phillip Island victory.
"So far so good, we have a good race pace and the bike's feeling pretty good at the moment," said Stoner. "We still need to improve the rear grip, but I think this is the same for everyone, we'd also like to get the harder rear tyre working better for the race.
"We began Qualifying with older tyres to understand where we are for the race and I'm quite happy as the lap times we were achieving were similar to Jorge and Dani who were on the new soft tyre.
"Then we put on the soft tyre for the first time since yesterday morning, everything felt good and we were able to improve our lap time consistently, but it's still difficult on the left side of the tyre and we're getting a lot of spinning and tyre degradation.
"We'll see what the weather does tomorrow, it's not looking too good right now but we'll adapt to whatever it throws at us."
The Repsol Honda rider needs to gain at lest ten points on Jorge Lorenzo to wrap up the title tomorrow, also his 26th birthday. Lorenzo will start next to Stoner on the grid.
"Jorge is strong everywhere we go and I think my chances of taking the Championship here tomorrow are pretty slim to be honest, we're just going to go out there and concentrate on winning the race," he said.
Honda Gresini's Marco Simoncelli will start third on the grid with Stoner's team-mate Andrea Dovizioso in the middle of the second row, in fifth on the grid.
"I'm very happy with qualifying because we made a big improvement which we needed to do for the race. We know there are many riders capable to fight for the podium, but now we are ready," he declared.
"Here it is always a very difficult race with the weather conditions, but I'm satisfied now because I can do low 1'31 laps with the hard rear tyre and hopefully we can return back on the podium. I had a much better feeling in the front and I was riding more aggressively, something you really need at this track".
It was a far less successful day for recent Japanese GP winner Dani Pedrosa, who could only qualify eighth.
"I had some problems with the hard tyre and I wasn't able to be fast," he explained. "Then when I put the soft on I improved my lap time a lot and was on top with fifteen minutes to go. Then we changed the set up of the bike a little and unfortunately it didn't work, so when everybody improved the lap time I couldn't and I was back to eighth place.
"The main issue I had today was changing direction in high speed areas. Let's see what the weather brings tomorrow and if we can take profit from the warm up to improve the set up slightly."
