Hopkins off to positive start

Hopkins was fourth-fastest in the second practice session, half a second slower than pacesetter Dani Pedrosa on his Honda.

He is looking forward to tomorrow's practice and is looking forward to the rest of the weekend: "The day went pretty good straight away as the Bridgestone tyres worked really well and so did the Suzuki," said Hopkins.

"We've had a play around with a couple of things including the suspension, but we haven't had to do a whole lot of set up because it all seemed to work well right out of the box.

"We'll try a couple of things tomorrow and test the durability of one of the best tyres from today, but all-in-all we're in pretty good shape and everything seems to be going well."

His Japanese test rider teammate Kousuke Akiyoshi got off to a slow start in the first practice session, but stepped it up in the second to set the sixth-fastest time, less than a tenth behind Hopkins.

"I am very pleased with my position and maybe quite surprised," commented Akiyoshi. "It is good to be able to race the GSV-R after so much testing this year. I think I can go a bit quicker now and will be trying to get a good grid position tomorrow to help me for the race."

However, it was not all good news at Suzuki, with Chris Vermeulen struggling all day, finishing the day in seventeenth position.

"It has not been a great day today! We struggled with some problems with the bike this morning which the mechanics sorted out very quickly between the sessions," said the Australian.

"This afternoon it felt like my first session really because anything I did this morning was a bit of a waste. We did get things going and made some progress in the session but I am disappointed with the lap time."