Edwards quickest at Phillip Island

The American was evaluating qualifying tyre developments to set a best lap of 1:29.566, which meant he ended the day six tenths of a second faster than MotoGP champion Casey Stoner.

The Ducati Marlboro rider focused on tyre testing for the day, while teammate Marco Melandri experimented with further set-up changes to make him more comfortable on the GP8 bike. And it appeared those efforts had paid off as he set the sixth fastest time.

The Rizla Suzuki team failed to shine during the test, with Loris Capirossi setting the ninth fastest time after what he described as a tough day. Teammate Chris Vermeulen was 10th.

"Today has been quite a tough day, but we have certainly made advances," said Capirossi. "We set out to get a good base setting for the bike and we have improved it over the day, but we still have quite a way to go.

"We have lots of stuff to test on the bike and we started to do that today but we still have a lot of work to do over the next two days.

"My crew worked really hard today and because of them we have made a lot of progress, the bike is improving all the time, but as I have said before this is a difficult track for the Suzuki so we have lots to do."

With Fiat Yamaha pair Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo choosing to skip the test, the way was left for MotoGP rookies Alex de Angelis, Andrea Dovizioso and James Toseland all to set top five times.

With last week's Sepang test having been incident filled, the opening day of action at Phillip Island passed without any big crashes - although the red flag was brought out at one point after a large bird landed on the track.

Today's times:

Pos  Rider       Team              Time      Laps
 1.  Edwards     Yamaha Tech3      1:29.566   77
 2.  Stoner      Ducati Marlboro   1:30.178   73
 3.  De Angelis  Honda Gresini     1:30.688   70
 4.  Dovizioso   JiR Team Scot     1:30.701   79
 5.  Toseland    Yamaha Tech3      1:30.864   81
 6.  Melandri    Ducati Marlboro   1:30.869   99
 7.  Nakano      Honda Gresini     1:31.111   91
 8.  Hayden      Repsol Honda      1:31.226  107
 9.  Capirossi   Rizla Suzuki      1:31.274   82
10.  Vermeulen   Rizla Suzuki      1:31.317   99
11.  De Puniet   Honda LCR         1:31.436  103
12.  Hopkins     Kawasaki Racing   1:31.623   88
13.  West        Kawasaki Racing   1:31.786   72
14.  Guintoli    Alice Team        1:32.484   68
15.  Elias       Alice Team        1:32.573   90