Suzuki not as quick as they wanted

With wet and windy conditions limiting the amount of dry weather running the team could do, Loris Capirossi and Chris Vermeulen have been left further behind in terms of the development of their bike than they hoped to be.

Team manager Paul Denning said that there had been some encouraging signs from the dry running they managed to do this afternoon, but they were still not at the level they wanted to be.

"It was encouraging to see that when some rear grip was dialled into the bike using the qualifying tyres we were able to achieve a promising lap-time," he explained.

"It gave a better level of confidence to both riders and they also improved their times on race tyres as well.

"But there is no getting away from the fact that we aren't where we hoped to be at the end of this test and we will be looking to put this behind us and make big steps in Qatar next week."

Capirossi and Vermeulen are optimistic that progress can be made in the next test at Qatar to put them in good stead for the opening race of the season there next month.

Capirossi said: "We tried lots of things today and we found a better solution than we did on the first day. I think we are in a better shape now and we can go with a good feeling to Qatar and try and do the last few things at the last test so we will be ready for the first race.

"We are still struggling in a few places and we know we have to work on those, but we are quite confident for the first race."

Vermeulen added: "We made some progress with the bike to solve some of the problems we have had here this weekend and we now have a direction to go in. We tested some tyres for Bridgestone and I finally got the chance to test some qualifiers.

"They seemed to work quite well and suit our bike and although I only used two qualifying tyres I am happy with the lap-time that I did. There is still more to come out of both me and the bike, bit this was the most positive day we have had at this test."