Stoner hoping for dry weather

Although the Ducati Marlboro rider was second fastest overall after the circuit had dried out, he wants the next two days to be completely dry so he can work on eradicating a problem he has with the rear of his bike.

"We were competitive in the dry and the wet today but it wasn't really a useful day for anybody because the weather was so on and off," said Stoner, who was beaten only by Marco Melandri on the timesheets.

"We did get some dry time at the end, though there was still some water around, so we couldn't really get any good sense from anything and we couldn't use proper tyres because the track was too cold and wet.

"When it started drying out we worked on a problem I've had with the rear end pumping when I'm on the gas. We had it here last November and we seemed to solve it in Phillip Island and Qatar, so if we get decent weather over the next couple of days we should be able to get it sorted out."

Teammate Loris Capirossi was pretty happy with the feel of his GP7, and is confident that the bike is going to be consistently fast this year.

"It's been a strange day with track conditions always changing," he said. "At first we did some laps in the wet and the bike felt good with rain settings.

"When the track improved I felt that the bike works a lot better than it did last November, when we had a few problems. I'm pretty happy because the GP7 worked well during tests at Sepang, Phillip Island and Qatar, and if it works well here too that suggests we can be competitive at all the races.

"I stopped a bit early today because there was no point trying to go faster when the track isn't in really good condition. Tomorrow I plan to do a long run, if conditions are good enough."