Vermeulen upbeat thanks to 'great bike'

The Rizla Suzuki rider ended up as fifth quickest in the afternoon session, the Australian admitting his bike was in great shape.

"It's good to be back at Valencia, it's a track I really enjoy and I was quite quick here last year, but I had some bad luck in the race and didn't finish," said Vermeulen.

"The team has done a good job today and have worked really hard.

"The bike is in great shape and we have done a lot of laps with the same tyres and the durability of the race rubber looks very good. There are some areas we need to work on tomorrow to find that extra half-a-second to get us up the front.

"We'll try our best and see how we go, but I'm feeling fairly confident that we will be up there come Sunday!"

Teammate John Hopkins was less than two tenths of a second slower than Vermeulen, the American winding up 10th.

"Position wise we aren't too satisfied with today's result, but the progress we have made over the day has been quite a big step," said Hopkins. "Everybody is so close at the moment and a couple of tenths would put us in the top-five. There are few things we need to look at overnight.

"I have a couple of riding techniques I need to check out and we have a few things to work on with the mechanics which should help us for the rest of the weekend. The Bridgestones seem to be working really well and we will give them a thorough test for durability tomorrow.

"I need to qualify well tomorrow so I can be up the front from the start of Sunday's race and stay there for my last race with Suzuki."