Stoner happy with dry set-up

The Ducati rider ended the morning practice happy with his setup but felt there was room for improvement, while being not so happy with his bike's performance in wet conditions.

"Everything went really well in the dry this morning and we quickly found a good set-up and feeling with the bike that allowed me to push quite hard straight away," Stoner said. "We've still got some areas we can improve on but in the dry we're more or less ready to race.

"We had a few more problems in the wet and have a few issues with the rear to sort out. So far we haven't found good traction and the changes we made to the bike didn't have the desired effect.

"I'm only half satisfied with today so if it's wet tomorrow we'll need to work really hard on finding a solution.

His teammate Marco Melandri struggled once again, fifteenth fastest in the morning and slowest in the afternoon session: "It hasn't been a good first day and, as we've seen so many times this year, the change in conditions from one session to the next certainly hasn't helped.

"The problems are still the same - I can't get any feeling for the tyres and I can't ride the bike like I want. Hopefully the conditions are more stable tomorrow."