Kawasaki duo slowed by chatter

De Puniet was in the top ten all day, but was concerned about the bike's behaviour when a new rear tyre was fitted.

"The first part of the session was good," said the Frenchman. "I was in the top three and was happy with my settings and tyres, I'm sure I could have kept improving my lap times.

"However, when we tried a new rear tyre I started to get a lot of problems with chatter, so now we need to check if it's a problem with the suspension settings or the rear tyre itself.

"In general the bike is not bad at all, we just need to fix the chatter problem and I've no doubt we can do that tomorrow, ready for qualifying."

His teammate West ended the day 15th after encountering similar issues.

"We've had a few problems with a bit of chatter in the bike: in some sections I'm really fast and in others I'm losing a lot of time, so we've got to put it all together and find a good set-up," West said.

"Today hasn't gone too badly and we played around with the tyres a bit. I know a lot of places where I can improve so tomorrow should be good. And we'll see what the weather does because if it gets really hot it's going to change things with the tyres.

"I'm happy with the way things went, overall. The time gap between me and (pacesetter) Casey (Stoner) is only 1.3 seconds: lower than it was at Assen or Donington, so we're getting closer."