Pedrosa confident after topping practice

The local favourite was nearly half a second clear of the field in the opening session, and remained on top for most of the slower afternoon hour, despite a crash at Turn 3 that put his primary bike out of action.

Pedrosa was able to rejoin on his spare and his previous time remained unbeaten until Valentino Rossi and John Hopkins edged ahead in the last minute of the session.

"This morning went quite well and I was able to ride with a fast and consistent pace for quite a few laps, which was a positive start to the weekend," said Pedrosa.

"The set-up looks okay and, even though we still have to work on the tyre choice, we're in quite good shape."

He played down his accident in the second session.

"This afternoon I was feeling confident but unfortunately I ran wide in Turn Three, got onto the dirty part of the track with too much lean and fell off," Pedrosa said.

"It was my mistake and was actually quite a normal crash. I was lucky that I was not hurt, but unfortunately there was a lot of damage to the bike so the mechanics have a bit of work to do.

"After that I wasn't able to go quite as quickly because the set-up of the second bike was good but not perfect, so once that's sorted things are looking quite good for tomorrow."

His teammate Nicky Hayden was only 14th quickest on combined times, but believes he is in better shape than his position indicates.

"I actually feel a little bit closer than it looks on paper and towards the end of the afternoon, though my finishing position wasn't great, we found a direction and were able to get some consistency going," said the world champion.

"This morning we had quite a tough session and we lost a lot of time because there were some problems with one bike and it took a while to figure out why it wasn't running right. That got us a little bit behind but we made some changes this afternoon, including to the transmission, which helped a lot.

"There are a few parts of the track where I'm losing a lot of time and other parts where my pace is pretty good. Though I was less than a second back this afternoon that's quite a lot and it'd be nice to take a big step tomorrow.

"The tyres seem to be working well which is good because they're going to be a huge part of the outcome this weekend."