Melandri upbeat by his progress

The Italian rider, joining Ducati from the Honda Gresini team, have struggled so far to adapt his riding style to the demands of the very powerful GP8 bike, also failing to match the pace of teammate and world champion Casey Stoner.

But Melandri felt he has made good progress following the first day of the test despite finishing nearly seven tenths behind Stoner.

"I'm really happy today because I finally feel as though I'm riding the bike more or less as I should," said Melandri. "We knew that Phillip Island would be better for us and that's proved to be the case. The feeling was good from the first lap, thanks also to the things we learnt in the last test.

"At Sepang I probably changed the balance of the bike too much, trying to make it more similar to what I have ridden in the past, whereas here we've just tried to find a good base set-up, which has made it more manageable in the corners and less nervous. I am happy even though we're still not at 100%.

"We've actually got plans to try something new with the weight distribution tomorrow and we want to continue working on the electronics to try and improve the power delivery even more, then we can start tyre testing. In any case we've made a great start here."

Stoner, second quickest, was pleased with his progress too, although the Australian suffered from shoulder pains following his crash last year.

"Everything went really well today, the feeling with the bike was perfect almost straight away," said Stoner. "The new Bridgestones, which had already given us positive feedback at Sepang, also worked perfectly here at Phillip Island - one of them in particular improves the bike a lot in the exit of the corners, especially in the final section of the track.

"We've also taken a step forward with some small changes to the front, which have made the bike more stable and improved grip to the point where my best time came without pushing, on a tyre that already had 17 laps on it. I'm also really happy with the latest specs of the engine and the way it is responding under acceleration coming out of the corners.

"The weather was basically perfect all day apart from when the wind picked up a little in the afternoon but the smaller fairing, which we used for the race here in October, meant that it wasn't a problem.

"Towards the end of the day my shoulder was a little sore because this is such a physical track, with a lot of fast corners, but it is still better than it was in Malaysia."