Marlboro Ducati's Casey Stoner has admitted the 2008 MotoGP world championship is out of his reach and added that the team gave too many points away at the start of the season..

Speaking at the Indy MotoGP pre-race press conference, the reigning champion said of the title: "It was gone awhile ago, and we started to bring it back and it was gone again.

"We always kept things reasonably open, but we were also just trying each race by race, just trying to do what we could. You know, not so much for the championship, but just the races themselves.

"I think the championship, like I said, was gone quite a few times. We gave too many points away at the beginning of the season, and that's really stung us now. So we, you know, with these two crashes, I think if we hadn't done such a bad beginning of the season, we would have still been within reach, but that's the way things have gone this year.

"That's the way things seem to be panning out for me. We've just got to make sure we try and bring these last five races home very strong and get ready for next year."