MotoReview

John Hopkins

"It's been the best start to a race weekend that we have had this year. We got a lot done on race tyres today to get the right selection for Sunday. Suzuki has made some changes to the bike to improve durability and that has also been very noticeable. We are putting a lot of laps in to test out the new parts and the tyres and the crew has worked really hard today to make sure everything went well. We will now see what the weather does tomorrow as rain has been forecast, but either way we will get the best out of both sessions that's for sure."

Chris Vermeulen

"We made a lot of progress today which was good. The guys worked really hard - especially in the second session - and we made a lot of changes to the set-up, all of which seemed to work well. I was happy with the way things went today, we tried a lot of different tyres and other changes to the bike which all seemed like they would work well over race distance. Unfortunately I lost a bit of time at the end of the second session, as I'm sure I would have been further up the timesheets - but that doesn't really matter until tomorrow and more importantly Sunday."

Shinya Nakano

"We have similar problem here as we had in Qatar in that I'm losing time accelerating out of the turns, especially the slow corners. I just can't seem to find traction at the rear. I can match everyone else down the straights and on the brakes, but I lose ground as soon as we're out of the turn and back on the gas. We also have some issues with getting the bike turned, which is again more noticeable around the slower corners. We need to look a little more closely at the set-up of both the chassis and the engine tonight to try and alleviate these problems ready for tomorrow. I'm enjoying being back on the bike, I like racing at this circuit, and I'm confident we can improve during tomorrows practice and qualifying sessions."

Randy de Puniet

"Although the lap time isn't what I was hoping for, today has not been so bad for me. My main problem is the fact that I'm losing so much time through the last split, especially around the chicane complex right at the end of the lap. We tried a few changes with the bike this afternoon, and I've tried a few different lines through these slow turns, but we've yet to see an improvement. We will concentrate on this again tomorrow, when my target is to close to within one second of the leading riders."