Stoner fired up over new Ducati Casey Stoner is very confident about his chances of fighting for the MotoGP title in 2010, as he reckons the new Ducati is much stronger than last year’s bike. Although the Australian finished in fourth place in last year’s championship after missing three races due to an illness, he came back strongly and won two of the last four events to show he was back at his best. Stoner tested the new Ducati after the end of the season at Valencia and was immediately impressed with the performance. The 2007 world champion admits he is bullish about his chances for the upcoming season. “The last few years I think we had a good opportunity to win the championship,” Stoner told reporters during the Wrooom press meeting in Madonna di Campiglio. “Things haven’t gone our way, my fault, and it’s things we haven’t been able to avoid. “I’m definitely looking forward to this year. It’s the first off-season in the past three years where I haven’t had any injury or some sort of operation. “In the last test in Valencia we tried to the new bike, the new engine configuration, and I really loved it. We had a lot more traction. “We were able to do a lot more with the bike and considering Valencia is a very good circuit for our bike anyway, we still were able to do a very good job with the new engine configuration, so we are very happy with that and we believe it’s going to help us on the tracks we struggled a little bit more in the past, make the bike a little bit more balanced throughout the season. “At the moment we are very happy and confident we can take the bike a little bit further along the season.” Although Stoner admitted that Ducati’s new engine configuration is likely to mean a lower top speed, the Australian is adamant that the bike handling will be so much better it will be worth the compromise. He also reckons it will make life easier for the satellite teams, who have usually struggled with the Italian bike in the past. “Considering it was the first test with the engine, it performed very, very well,” he added. “We are of course losing slightly on the top speed, but at Valencia since I was coming…

Read Article @ autosport.com