Pedrosa pleased with early pace

The Spaniard finished the day's running in third place, albeit a full second behind pace-setter Jorge Lorenzo and more than half a second down on second-placed Valentino Rossi.

"I'm happy we've made a positive start to the weekend because sometimes we've struggled a little for direction on Fridays, but today was better in that respect," Pedrosa said. "We still need to close the gap to the front riders and this is what we'll be working on tomorrow.

"We tried a new swing arm from HRC here and we'll continue to test it tomorrow because today we were still working on the general machine settings for this track. Overall, I'm pleased with how today went."

Pedrosa's team-mate Andrea Dovizioso was fifth fastest today, following his maiden MotoGP victory at Donington Park three weeks ago.

"It felt great to ride out of the pitlane today as a MotoGP winner, and I enjoyed the summer break all the more after the victory at Donington," he said. "I'm under no illusions, though - we have to work hard so that I can repeat the performance in dry conditions.

"Today we were not as close to the front riders as we would have liked. We need to make some adjustments to the handling under braking because this is an area we can clearly improve on. I'm sure we can move forward from here."