Stoner favourite for Shanghai glory

Valentino Rossi has backed Casey Stoner as favourite for tomorrow’s China GP in Shanghai despite his brilliant pole position in final qualifying this afternoon.

Rossi, who said his 1.58.424 lap was one of the best qualifying laps of his 12 season world championship career, reckons MotoGP points leader Stoner will be tough to beat on the factory Ducati GP7.

Rossi, who goes into tomorrow’s 22-lap race trailing Stoner by 10-points, said: “For me, I think Stoner is maybe the fastest, but also John (Hopkins) is a little bit better than us with his rhythm.”

Rossi managed to grab pole despite a huge speed disadvantage compared to Ducati on Shanghai’s long back straight – the longest on the GP calendar. His bike was 16ks slower than Alex Barros’ D’Antin Ducati in qualifying and Rossi joked in the qualifying press conference: “In Qatar I was losing between 0.4 and 0.7 on the straight to Ducati. Here we need a gun!”

Rossi though is fearful that Ducati’s top speed advantage will be too tough to beat tomorrow.

He added: “When we look at the top speed we cry a little bit. Our bike is very competitive and also has good acceleration, but we need something more for the speed. The difference, especially with the Ducati, is impressive. For tomorrow, if I have to fight with the Ducati it is difficult for sure, but this is the situation. All the engineers are working a lot on the engine, but at this level it s not easy to find some top speed. We are speaking about a lot of horsepower difference.”