Repsol Honda's Casey Stoner has stuck by the decision to race with the harder-compund Bridgestone tyre in today's Catalan MotoGP even though he found very little grip for all of the 25 laps and 'destroyed' his legs trying to make up time.

Stoner, and team-mate Dani Pedrosa, were the only two front runners not to go with the soft tyre as the pair were concerned the white-striped option wouldn't last race distance as the RC213V works them at a high temperature. The Aussie played it safe but was fighting for traction the whole way.

"Trying to get grip and trying to make the bike work was a little bit more physical so my legs are destroyed, my arms not so much but my legs are. It was trying to stand on the pegs to get some traction, trying to stop the bike wheelying when the traction did arrive, all kinds of things, it was a little bit tiring at the end but I only felt it after the race," said Stoner, speaking to bikesportnews.com this evening.

"Looking at it, the way the race went, the softer choice could have been better but with our bike we were running a little too high in temperatures with the soft tyre and that's why we were concerned we could have some issues at the end of the race.

"It's a little bit tough to tell. Unfortunately, with the best setup we felt this weekend we had the highest temperatures so we decided to go with the hard tyre because we thought we could make it work a little more than others but that was the opposite, we couldn't get it to work. Maybe it was the wrong coice, but it was the safer choice for us.

It could have gone completely wrong, we could have blistered the tyre and gone backwards at the end so it was better we were at least fighting for the back of a podium than dropping back. At the end, I just started pushing more than I am usually comfortable with, pushing deeper on the braking points, taking some more risks, just trying to close that gap."