Rossi boosted by practice progress

The former champion was only eighth in the morning session, before improving to second in the afternoon.

His progress in the second session left Rossi optimistic about the rest of the weekend.

"This morning we had some problems when the temperature was lower, especially with the front tyre which takes a lot of stress around this track," Rossi explained.

"Towards the end we found a better front tyre but then it started to rain a bit so I couldn't go any faster.

"Anyway this afternoon was much better and I feel like we have the bike well balanced. The rear tyre feels very good and I'm happy with that, although we still have some issues to sort out with the front.

"There are some parts of the track where we could be a little bit faster so we need to make a few adjustments to get to the maximum, but anyway 23.0 is not so bad and we're in second place.

"Tomorrow it is going to be much hotter apparently but usually our bike works well in the heat so I am quite confident about this."

Rossi's teammate Colin Edwards fell from fourth in the morning to eighth in second practice - yet was much happier in the latter session.

"I was half a second quicker this afternoon but somehow ended up twice as far down the order!" he said.

"Despite that though we improved a lot this afternoon and I definitely felt like I could have gone a bit faster at the end, but I slowed up a bit as I came pretty close to (Nicky) Hayden after he blew up.

"The team have worked hard as usual and we've played around with some suspension stuff that seems to be working well.

"We've got various different tyre constructions to work through with Michelin and it seems like we've got some promising options in our selection. Tomorrow is just going to be a case of seeing what works best and fine-tuning the setting before we put it on the front row..."