Silva hopeful of more progress

The Spanish rider, replacing Alex Hofmann at the Pramac d'Antin team while the German recovers from injury, finished at the bottom of the times in the afternoon as he acclimatised to the Desmosedici bike.

"I have already run at this track in MotoGP when I substituted for Alex Hofmann at Pramac d'Antin last year, but the bike was different, so I needed some time today to find the right feeling with the Desmosedici," said Silva, who had also replaced Hofmann at Brno last year.

"Anyway I'm quite confident because during the afternoon practice, also thanks to the advice of my mechanics, I was able to lower my lap time by two seconds. I want to achieve a good laptime and tomorrow I hope to be faster. Above all, my aim is simply not to finish in last position on the classification."

Brazilian teammate Alex Barros finished the day as 11th fastest after the veteran reported his hand injury was finally cured.

"After the summer break, we started to work again today and I can finally say that I have completely recovered from my hand injury," Barros said. "This morning we started convinced to obtain a good lap time but we met some difficulties with grip levels.

"It is nothing particularly worrying, since we are still only at the first day and we have time and determination to recover. Already in the afternoon, during the second free practice session, I was able to improve my race pace and lower my lap time; this means that we are heading in the right direction and we must continue in this way.

"Today we focussed mainly on bike set-up and tomorrow we will look at testing and choosing our Bridgestone race tyres."