Stoner out to make up ground in China

World MotoGP champion Casey Stoner is confident he can breathe life into his title defence at this weekend's Chinese Grand Prix.

The young Australian has put behind him two mediocre performances in Spain and Portugal after starting the season with victory in Qatar.

But he is now eyeing a frantic run of six races in eight weeks as an opportunity to pressure his rivals.

Stoner, who dominated the 2007 season on his factory Ducati, is fourth on the points table, 21 points adrift of joint series leaders, Jorge Lorenzo and Dani Pedrosa of Spain.

Five-times world champion Valentino Rossi is in third place on 47 points with Stoner on 40.

But Stoner has dismissed suggestions he cannot target wins at the moment and needs to focus on picking up points where he can.

"There's a lot of races left and we're not looking at points now," Stoner said.

"It hasn't started the way we wanted it to but I think a points situation is not something to look at the moment.

"Later on in the season if we're still too far behind we really need to look at it but at the moment we just want to go out there and see if we can really win some races and get some better results than we have been."

Stoner was a distant 11th in Spain and a brave sixth in Portugal where he had to ride while grappling with a video camera which had broken loose from his bike.

"These last two races certainly haven't gone to plan, but we never really expected them to go too well, I suppose.

"Jerez was worse than it should have been. We had the pace to be in fifth so we would have been reasonably happy with that.

"Also we had the pace to be a lot better in Portugal but in the beginning we had the problems with the (camera) box coming off which affected us for quite a long time.

"Things haven't gone well for us these last two races but the season started strong, we had three good pre-season tests and I'm expecting to pick up the pace again for this next race," he said.

Stoner has mixed feelings about the Shanghai track, on which he won last year.

"It's not too bad. In the wet it's fantastic, I remember in the 250s the grip was unbelievable and it was a great joy to ride," he said.

"But the track itself has a lot of tight, technical corners that on bikes are just more of a pain than anything.

"There are a few fast corners that are a lot of fun coming onto the back straight but then immediately after that it's the tightest corner in grands prix."

Meanwhile, Queensland Suzuki rider Chris Vermeulen, hopes to kick-start his campaign at the Shanghai track where his team scored a podium finish last year but he raced with a foot injury after a qualifying crash.

"We made some steps forward in the test after Portugal and I hope we can carry those improvements forward into the weekend," Vermeulen said.

"I got my best result of the season in Portugal (eighth) but it is not nearly good enough. I need to be challenging at the front and going for podiums."