Suzuki frustrated at time lost to rain

Eager to get back on the pace after some difficult recent races, the team ended up 11th and 14th with Loris Capirossi and Chris Vermeulen, having been unable to make much progress with its set-up.

"As I have said before, we need to have time on the bike to get it set-up the best for us," said Capirossi.

"It seems that we keep getting really difficult weather that isn't helping us at all. Today we used a wet tyre for the whole session and at the end 85 per cent of the track was dry and the rest was wet so it was difficult to be able to get anything done.

"We can hope that the weather is better tomorrow so we can work on the bike and if we can I am sure we will be in a good position for Sunday."

Team boss Paul Denning agreed that the day had been something of a wash-out.

"I don't think that there will be much that any rider or team will have learned from that session with the weather changing so much over the hour," he said. "For most of the session neither the wet nor the slick tyre was the appropriate choice.

"Having said that, when the track was at its wettest Chris was able to take a big step with the bike setting and Loris also managed to get a feel and some essential data from his machine."

Vermeulen said he felt he had at least made some strides with Suzuki's wet settings.

"We worked hard - and quickly - on getting a good wet setting while the track was still wet and the bike worked well in those conditions," he said.

"At the end the track dried a lot so we just tested some small things that didn't really rely on fast lap times, which was useful because with how the track was there wasn't a lot else to be learnt out there."