Illien happy with team progress

Although Andrew Pitt and Jeremy McWilliams ended the day near the bottom of the timesheets, their pace is better than they showed in recent testing and points towards better performances in the future.

"I think it's fair to say that we have continued our trend on from the test in Jerez," said Illien. "We're still making good improvements to the bikes overall performance - everyone can see that, which is very positive.

"Now we just need to focus on maintaining consistency and closing that gap up."

McWilliams is confident that they should go even quicker tomorrow as they work overnight on optimising their set-up.

"Today was positive - the bike is getting better," he said. "Again we made good progress but we're still some way off where we want to be - it wasn't a bad start though.

"We tried some new Michelin rubber today and I'm pleased with the performance.  I had a couple of minor handling issues but we collected a lot of information over the course of the day so we'll definitely be in better shape tomorrow."

Pitt added: "We had a few problems during the second practice session and I had to use my spare bike - minor electrical issues, nothing major.  I did 35 laps over the two practice sessions and had some good consistent time to try out the different tyre compounds.

"We have the front sorted now and I think we're nearly there with the rear. Overall I'm pleased with today, I got into the 1m59s, which is good, and we're slowly closing the gap. I'm looking forward to tomorrow."