Aussie Casey Stoner has been in superb form since switching to HRC for this year.

Australia’s Casey Stoner is confident that he’s ready for this weekend’s MotoGP World Championship season opener at Qatar in the Middle East.

The 2007 world champion has been in incredible form since switching to Repsol Honda for this year, again lapping fastest during testing at the Losail Circuit earlier this week.

Stoner has constantly been developing the RC212V ahead of MotoGP’s last season featuring 800cc regulations.

“I’m really happy. I didn’t think we would get any laps in tonight judging from the weather earlier in the day, it was a little tough but the wind seemed to settle and the track conditions improved a lot and we got some good test time in tonight,” Stoner said.

“By the look of the lap times everyone seems to have taken a big step forward, but we’re happy with what we’ve achieved again here and we can enter the race weekend with confidence but at the same time everyone else will be improving their set-up so we can’t relax.

“We found a good rider position which I’m really happy with, having moved my position more towards the rear in Sepang – to try and find more grip, here we can run a more neutral set-up and everything seems to be working well.

“We did some more work on electronics tonight and also on the tyres, but generally worked in preparation for the weekend.”

This weekend marks Stoner’s race return to Honda for the first time since 2006, when he raced his rookie season with the LCR Honda satellite team.