Casey Stoner set the fastest lap time on Friday ahead of the final race of the 2009 FIM MotoGP World Championship season in Valencia.

The Ducati Marlboro rider topped the timesheets with a best lap of one minute, 32.813 seconds around the Ricardo Tormo circuit.

That put the Australian ahead of Fiat Yamaha's Jorge Lorenzo and his fellow Spaniard Dani Pedrosa on the Repsol Honda.

Italy's Valentino Rossi, who recently secured his ninth world title, was next on the Fiat Yamaha, with Frenchman Randy de Puniet and San Marino's Alex de Angelis (San Carlo Honda) on the provisional second row of the grid.

The top 10 was completed by Colin Edwards (Tech 3 Yamaha), Andrea Dovizioso (Repsol Honda), Loris Capirossi (Rizla Suzuki) and Nicky Hayden (Ducati Marlboro).

British rider James Toseland was 13th quickest on his final outing for Tech 3 Yamaha before his return to the FIM Superbike World Championship where he is a twice former champion.

That was two places better than American Ben Spies who won the 2009 World Superbikes title and is having a one-off ride in MotoGP ahead of his move to Tech 3 Yamaha next season.

Rossi admitted he was relaxed at not having to worry any more about winning the world title.

He said: "It's really nice to be riding as the world champion without having to think about points and now I just want to finish the year with a good race.

"Today was not so bad, I'm not happy with fourth but we're not far off and we worked well on the bike.

"We had some different settings to work on to try to improve our performance at this track and then at the end I was able to do some good laps all together.

"We have quite a lot of work to do, we need to try the harder Bridgestone tyre and try to make another step with the setting, but so far we have done a good job."