Capirossi glad to be back in action

The Rizla Suzuki rider missed the last two races after injuring his hand in a crash during the Catalan Grand Prix.

Although Capirossi still needs medical treatment during sessions, the Italian was back on his bike today.

The veteran rider finished as 12th quickest.

"First of all I want to say I'm really sorry to the whole team," said Capirossi, "because today I have had to fight with myself as well as the bike due to my condition still being not as good as it could be - but I am happy to be here and happy to be fighting to get back to fitness.

"The thing that I want is to have is my condition 100% because the bike is not too bad here and it is working very well around this track.

"The team have made a really good job and they improved the bike a lot from this morning. We have to keep working in the same way tomorrow and I am sure we can still be more competitive."

Teammate Chris Vermeulen was left lamenting a difficult first day of work after being unable to find the right set-up for his bike.

The Australian finished down in 14th place out of 17 riders.

"It has not been a good day overall even though we did make a good start this morning and the bike worked well straight out of the box," said Vermeulen. "We only used one set of tyres in the morning session and the durability seemed really good while the track was cooler.

"This afternoon it was much warmer, but we seemed to go nowhere with the bike. We tried a few things but still went back to the same setting as we had this morning. We just couldn't seem to make it better so we have a lot of work to do overnight to make it happen tomorrow."