Lorenzo upbeat over Valencia pace

Yamaha's world champion set the quickest time of the day when he outpaced Ducati rival Casey Stoner by over three tenths of a second in the afternoon session.

Lorenzo, the winner of the previous race at Estoril last Sunday, admitted he was upbeat about his pace.

"Today was a good day," said Lorenzo. "We started strongly from the first moment and I am feeling so confident, plus my bike is working very well here.

"We need to continue like this tomorrow and make a few small steps forward with our setting. I am so happy to be riding at home again, in front of the Spanish fans here at Cheste as the world champion.

"I hope we are strong again tomorrow where I have a very special helmet to show everyone."

Team-mate Valentino Rossi, on the other hand, was not too pleased with his day after struggling with the set-up of his bike.

The Italian, in his final race with Yamaha, finished down in ninth position.

"This morning was not so bad but the afternoon was not great," he said. "We weren't able to improve the setting from the morning and we had a few problems; we have some work to do because at the moment we don't have enough grip and the bike is difficult to ride.

"The times are quite close but we are in still ninth so we need to find a way to improve tomorrow. We will have a look at the data and see what we can come up with tomorrow because for sure we need to improve the grip if we are going to be competitive this weekend.

"It's a very important weekend, the last for me with Yamaha, so of course we want to try to be at the maximum."