West fastest in wet warm-up

West, who is renowned for his wet weather skills, led the way for most of the session, overcoming an early challenge from Suzuki's Chris Vermeulen - another rider regarded as a rain specialist.

Vermeulen's session came to an early end when he crashed under braking for the Esses with two minutes to go. He slid into the soft barriers at the end of the escape road and got up without injury.

A heavy downpour 40 minutes before the warm-up left the track extremely wet throughout the session, even though the rainfall had eased considerably by the time the riders took to the track.

West continued to improve his time until the final minutes, ending with a best lap of 1:43.837 - 0.136 seconds clear of Stoner.

Polesitter Colin Edwards was third fastest, ahead of Vermeulen and his teammate John Hopkins.

Alex Barros took sixth, the first time all weekend that one of the Pramac D'Antin Ducatis had appeared amongst the frontrunners.

Randy de Puniet had been in the top three early on, but dropped to eighth behind Nicky Hayden after crashing with five minutes remaining.

Kurtis Roberts ended up slowest of all after falling at Coppice, while Dani Pedrosa had to take to the gravel at the Craner Curves following a slide at the top of the hill.

Pos  Rider             Bike      Time
 1.  Anthony West      Kawasaki  1:43.837
 2.  Casey Stoner      Ducati    1:43.973  + 0.136
 3.  Colin Edwards     Yamaha    1:44.095  + 0.258
 4.  Chris Vermeulen   Suzuki    1:44.591  + 0.754
 5.  John Hopkins      Suzuki    1:44.597  + 0.760
 6.  Alex Barros       Ducati    1:45.056  + 1.219
 7.  Nicky Hayden      Honda     1:45.389  + 1.552
 8.  Randy de Puniet   Kawasaki  1:45.469  + 1.632
 9.  Valentino Rossi   Yamaha    1:45.768  + 1.931
10.  Alex Hofmann      Ducati    1:45.771  + 1.934
11.  Shinya Nakano     Honda     1:45.786  + 1.949
12.  Loris Capirossi   Ducati    1:45.949  + 2.112
13.  Daniel Pedrosa    Honda     1:45.992  + 2.155
14.  Toni Elias        Honda     1:46.104  + 2.267
15.  Marco Melandri    Honda     1:46.146  + 2.309
16.  Carlos Checa      Honda     1:46.193  + 2.356
17.  Sylvain Guintoli  Yamaha    1:52.635  + 8.798
18.  Makoto Tamada     Yamaha    1:52.769  + 8.932
19.  Kurtis Roberts    KR        1:53.340  + 9.503