Marlboro Ducati's Casey Stoner reckons he had no problems at all in holding off a mid-race charge by reigning world champion Valentino Rossi during last night's MotoGP at Qatar.

But the Aussie, who was expected to suffer from his wrist problem towards the end of the floodlit race, says he was able to operate at 100 per cent for the whole race.

It has been difficult to work in such short sessions here this weekend and going into the race last night we took a gamble with a setting change that we weren’t sure about, but we got the opportunity to try it in warm-up and it felt great, so thank you to the team that worked really hard during the whole week-end," said Stoner.

"That gave me more confidence ahead of the race. We knew this circuit is demanding for fuel consumpionts and I had to adapt my style a little to keep the pace up and hold the advantage over Valentino but finally we didn’t have problems at all with it. My wrist felt 100% tonight but I still need to work on my overall fitness after the down time over the winter and I’m sure we can keep progressing."