Nakano upbeat about new parts

The Japanese rider ended the day 16th fastest in free practice but was upbeat that there was plenty more to come from his machine.

"My first impressions are very good: we now have a bike that's smoother under both acceleration and braking," he said. "Unfortunately, after some laps with the good feeling the front-end chattering returned. We've already begun to fix the problem but so far we haven't found the solution.

"We will be trying lots of different things as this is effectively a new bike and its character is quite different, but today was important as we have now got a lot of data. This machine has much more potential than the standard bike so we have to take things step-by-step."

Team manager Gianluca Montiron was confident that the team would unleash more speed from the bike on Saturday.

"We need more time with these bikes to understand the characteristics of the new machines and the team need to work more on the set-up of the bikes as the two hours today isn't enough to understand fully the improvement that these new parts provide," he explained.

"At the moment it may not look as though things have changed from the times and Shinya still is unable to push hard, but it is early days with the new machine and we have to change the settings so that Shinya can make the step forward in lap-times.

"The good thing is that the overall impression is good, but it will take time to get the best from this new technical package. Tyre choice will be critical, as similar to Laguna we are seeing weather conditions which aren't as warm as we expected, so it's important that we find a good tyre for the race on Sunday."