Capirossi encouraged by practice pace

The Italian has struggled to get near the pace of teammate Casey Stoner so far this season, but he was delighted to be part of the Ducati Marlboro 1-2 on the opening day of action at the Istanbul Park track.

"I'm very satisfied," said Capirossi, who was just behind teammate Stoner at the end of the day. "We've worked really well on bike set-up so I'm enjoying riding again and that's good.

"We made some adjustments for more front-end feeling and I felt better with every lap, so we will continue working in this direction and I think I can improve even more.

"The first two races were quite demanding for me, but now I'm back up front and that's important. Bridgestone are doing a great job with the tyres.

"The front we are using here is a hard tyre and a bit difficult on the first lap, but after that it works really well. The rear is also hard but it's quite consistent over a lot of laps and that's encouraging."

Although Ducati's pace for Friday will be a worry for their rivals, Stoner believes that there is still plenty more improvement to come from their Desmosedici GP7 bike.

"The last run was my first time on new tyres since I first went out this morning," said the Australian. "We tried a different rear, so we've only used two rears from our selection and we've got another couple to try tomorrow.

"It would be nice if we can find an even better one. Everything seems pretty comfortable, pretty good at the moment. We haven't changed the settings too much from Jerez, so obviously the team did the right things for this circuit.

"For sure we need to improve the bike before we get to the race, but track conditions are going to change a lot, so we don't know how our current settings will work by the time the race comes around.

"As always, we're trying to make the bike as perfect as possible; we need it to turn a bit better, with a little more traction and a little less pumping. Once we've got those things we should have quite a good package.

"I've had some pretty good results in the past here so it would be nice if we can continue that."