Marlboro Ducati's Casey Stoner reckons that he will spend the opening practice sessions at Assen looking for some more rear grip from his Desmosedici ahead of the MotoGP race on Saturday.

The Australian former champion says the lack of traction is the only real problem he has with the carbon swingarmed-equipped GP9 and missed out on some vital testing time after the Catalan round due to illness.

Ideally we’d like another weekend of consistent good weather so that we can work on the bike and find a bit more rear grip, which is the only thing we’re missing at the moment. The rest of the bike is great – it is turning well and the front is really stable under braking," said Stoner.

"I wasn’t really fit at the test and I didn’t do a lot of laps but we did what we needed to and now we’ll try and take advantage of that work in the next race.

“Assen is a strange track for me because before I rode there in MotoGP it was one of my favourite circuits but one where I never managed to get great results in the smaller categories."