Hopkins still feeling sore

The Kawasaki rider is still recovering from the groin injury he picked up in a testing crash at Phillip Island.

The American had been forced to limit his running in the official test at Jerez earlier this month, and he admitted he is still not feeling 100 percent.

"The priority today was to decide on a tyre for the first race next week and we evaluated many different combinations of both race and qualifying tyres," said Hopkins, seventh quickest in the test.

"It's been a while since I've been able to get on the bike and get stuck into testing because of my injury, although this is slowly improving day-by-day.

"The most difficult thing has been maintaining fitness whilst recovering but I managed to do some training this week and, despite still feeling sore, we got through quite a lot of laps today."

Hopkins reported no problems with the lighting system but, like Valentino Rossi, he said the track temperatures were too low during the night.

"The lighting around the circuit is good fun as it's a bit different from the usual, but the track temperature is quite low and I could really feel it in the tyres, which are going to be a crucial factor for the race.

"Now we know what tyre selection we will be using, we are going to concentrate on the machine set-up tomorrow."