Hopkins: This track suits the Suzuki.

Team Suzuki MotoGP team-mate John Hopkins and Kenny Roberts Jr completed day one of the Catalan Grand Prix in eighth and fourteenth places respectively as they completed their first laps with new engine development parts made available for this weekend.

Hopkins was a promising sixth fastest in the morning, but failed to better his time in the afternoon session and dropped to 0.8secs behind Marco Melandri, but is optimistic for the weekend ahead.

"This track is suiting the Suzuki a lot better than Mugello did," declared Hopper. "We have some new parts and we have been working on getting them set-up right. We ran through a handful of tyres and I'm pretty sure we've found what we will use a race tyre.

"So that's good considering we've now got all tomorrow morning and half of the afternoon session to work on the final adjustment - before everybody goes for it with the qualifiers," he continued. "The Suzuki seems to be working fine around here at the moment and it's certainly pulling its weight."

"We still have some settings to work on and more engine mapping to do. This will get the new parts working better than they have done today," revealed Hopkins' chief technician Stuart Shenton. "John was consistently lapping in the high 1min 44secs and we need to get him in the low 44secs - or even better high 43secs - and I'm sure that will be possible."

Meanwhile, Roberts did manage to improve on his morning time in the afternoon hour, but his fairly lowly 14th position overall didn't change. "Today has been the same as last Friday at Mugello. We have been trying settings and getting the bike the best we can get it for the race," were KR Jr's fairly uninspiring words.