In warm and humid conditions, Honda LCR rider Casey Stoner has qualified 12th fastest for tomorrow’s Czech Grand Prix. And although he will start from the fourth row of the grid, Stoner is in a buoyant mood in advance of the 22 lap race, following a positive day of practice and qualifying.

Unlike most of his rivals, Stoner did not use a soft qualifying tyre in earlier practice sessions to post an artificially fast time. His focus with the LCR crew has been on race set-up and today Stoner made an impressive step forward after a small engine problem delayed his progress yesterday. In this morning’s final free practice session Stoner posted a best lap of 1’58.4 on race tyres -- 1.2s quicker than his fastest Friday time.

“We were unlucky at the end of the session when the chequered flag came out and Casey missed his final qualifying run by just one second . He had the potential to be faster, perhaps another half a second. But the positive point is that Casey has a strong race set-up and hopefully he will have a chance to fight for the podium -- that should be our target.”

“I made a good step forward today and found a much better set-up and feeling for this track, while some other riders used qualifying tyres for a fast lap. This makes me reasonably confident for the race and even though I haven’t raced a MotoGP bike here there are some good passing spots. In qualifying I had the option of two qualifying tyres and I did the time I thought I could do, although it may have been quicker if I had been able to run my final lap. But in race trim the lap times are fast and consistent although I would still like a little more feeling from the front-end.”