October 17, 2009

Casey Stoner clinched pole position for Sunday's Australian MotoGP then revealed he had been battling ill-health since last year.

Stoner won a head-to-head battle for top spot with Yamaha's world champion Valentino Rossi as he continued his remarkable return to competition.

The Australian rebuffed Rossi, who had clocked the fastest lap in the last few minutes, to regain top spot with a time of 1m30.341s, five hundredths of a second better that the Italian. Honda's Dani Pedrosa survived a fall to take third place.

Stoner, Ducati's 2007 world champion, recently made his comeback from a 10-week layoff to take second spot in the Portuguese Grand Prix and is now ideally placed to win his third straight Australian race.

He took his first pole position since the season-opener in Qatar, which he won, but his title hopes evaporated in a ``torrid'' season of poor health.

He became exhausted towards the end of races from the sixth round in Catalunya, Spain, but his team now believe his problems can be traced back to 2008.

"To be honest we're actually starting to realise the more we're getting back to my fitness that we've had this problem longer than even I thought," Stoner said after his qualifying battle.

"It is definitely longer than Catalunya. We've had it all season once we started thinking back about it - how hard training was compared to how it used to be.

"We're actually starting to think it started last year, no where near to a degree what we've got now but I haven't trained properly in almost 12 months.

"I had the wrist operation so I couldn't train properly then.

"But the level my fitness is coming back up so I hope it's going to surpass anything we've done so far and hopefully next year we're going to be fitter and stronger.

"It's great to come back. We've had a torrid season - it's been disaster.

"It's nice to come back in these two races and be competitive again. It's nice to be back up front again."

Erratic weather, with intermittent rain, wind and sunshine, affected all riders Friday and Saturday but Stoner said he was prepared for anything on Sunday.

"This is to be expected at Phillip Island, it's like this almost every year. The weather's up, it's down, it can be hot, it can be cold in a few minutes difference.

"But luckily we've been fast in every session - we still need to definitely make some improvements before the race tomorrow but in general the bike's been good in all conditions."

Rossi, who Spanish teammate Jorge Lorenzo by 18 points in the series, said a small error cost him pole position.

"We are on the front row which is the most important thing and I think we can definitely have a good race tomorrow," Rossi said.

"I have a good setting and with the last modification we made I was able to make another step and we were quite fast.

"The pole position was possible today but unfortunately I made a mistake in the last session of my flying lap and Stoner was able to go a little bit faster than me."

Lorenzo, who was suffering from food poisoning on Friday, said he still felt weak because he had not been able to eat a lot.

Phillip Island Qualifying Times
1. Casey Stoner (AUS) Ducati 1min 30.341sec
2. Valentino Rossi (ITA) Yamaha at 0.050
3. Dani Pedrosa (ESP) Honda 0.729
4. Jorge Lorenzo (ESP) Yamaha 0.730
5. Colin Edwards (USA) Yamaha 0.755
6. Alex de Angelis (RSM) Honda 0.919
7. Nicky Hayden (USA) Ducati 0.984
8. Randy de Puniet (FRA) Honda 1.039
9. Mika Kallio (FIN) Ducati 1.043
10. Andrea Dovizioso (ITA) Honda 1.131
Also 15. Chris Vermuelen (AUS) Suzuki 1.997