Australian MotoGP, Phillip Island
Date: 17-18 October
Saturday 17 October: Qualifying: Qualifying 0250-0600, BBC Red Button/online Sunday 18 October: 0250-0505, BBC Red Button/online, Race live 0545-0700, BBC One/online, Race repeat 1200-1300, BBC Two/online ;
Stoner keen to impress home fans
Casey Stoner says he will be a serious contender as he seeks a third win at Phillip Island in as many years in Sunday's Australian MotoGP.
Two weeks ago, the Aussie Ducati rider sealed a second-place finish in Portugal on his return from a three-race lay-off through a mystery illness.
"The package works a lot better here than it does in Portugal and even in Portugal it was fantastic," he said.
"We'll see what we can pull off here - hopefully we can be running up front."
Stoner won two races in the first part of the season before being struck down by an energy-sapping illness at Catalunya in June, and battled on for the next four races until he was forced to take time out to have the problem resolved.
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That ended his hopes of challenging for the title this year, but he says if he had not taken a break, there would have been no point turning up for any other races this year.
"If we continued racing through the season and hadn't gone back to figure out what was wrong, coming to this race would have been another impossible task," he said.
Stoner's achievement in coming second in Portugal in his first race back almost overshadowed Jorge Lorenzo's victory, which saw the Spaniard cut Valentino Rossi's championship lead to only 18 points with three races remaining.
And the Australian said he was mentally and physically refreshed in the run-up to his home race.
"It was nice to have a good result in Portugal," he said.
"We got not so much our confidence as our belief back that we can be pushing at the front.
"I was training before (the Portuguese race in) Estoril lightly on the bike and we found the same problems as before through those five races - I trained again after Estoril and it was 100%, no problem.
"We're definitely in better condition than we were in Portugal and hopefully can get better condition before (the last race of the season in) Valencia, I think every weekend we do after here is going to get better and better to the point where we don't have an issue.
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Those five races where I struggled, the bike was working at a very good level, so it was me letting everyone down
Casey Stoner
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"After we've figured out what this is, I don't think we'll have something similar happen again and if we do we'll jump on it straight away."
Despite his health problems this season, Stoner still lies fourth in the championship standings.
He said that if he had been at full strength, he would have been up among the front-runners - and he felt he still had a role to play in the final throes of the battle for the world title.
"We've had some good wins this year but not nearly as many as we'd like," he said.
"Those five races where I struggled, the bike was working at a very good level, so it was me letting everyone down.
"We know we've got a chance of winning this race and the next two."
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