Davies satisfied with form on return

The Briton has been called up to replace the sacked Alex Hofmann for the final rounds of the season, having impressed the team when he substituted for Hofmann at very short notice when the German was injured in practice at Laguna Seca.

"The first session I started off by taking it easy because the track conditions were tricky and I wanted to take things step by step," Davies said, having gone 15th fastest in the morning.

"As the day went on we introduced different modifications to the bike, and in the afternoon I was able to get a better feeling with the Ducati."

Davies had a minor fell near the end of the afternoon, which he suspected was due to liquid on the circuit.

"I had a harmless crash that I think was caused by some oil on the track, or something similar, because 10 seconds later (Casey) Stoner crashed in the same place, in the same way, and he made the same comments," he said.

"Tomorrow, I hope to improve my lap times and get a good spot on the grid to start from."

Alex Barros was a promising sixth quickest on the second D'Antin bike, and felt that he could have found more time.

"Today was a difficult one," he said. "Because of the meteorological conditions, I wasn't able to ride many laps in the dry during the morning session, and also in the afternoon I wasn't able to get in many dry laps, because we ran into a few problems and the track conditions were changing so rapidly.

"During the last six minutes of the free practice, we were very productive, and I took sixth position and had a good race pace going. On my last lap, I was going really well, but I went straight in a braking area otherwise I think I could have improved my time even more, if not for that mistake.

"For tomorrow, I hope to improve, and I especially hope that the wind dies down, because it made things so difficult today."