The first day of the new single-tyre era in MotoGP ended with Rizla Suzuki riders Chris Vermeulen and Loris Capirossi an encouraging fourth and fifth on the testing timesheets at Valencia - compared with 13th and ninth places in Sunday's race.
Whilst Suzuki has plenty of experience with Bridgestone rubber, the new limited range of options being developed for 2009 appears to particularly suit the GSV-R.
Both riders also evaluated a range of new parts during the day, which ended with Vermeulen having lapped nearly 1.5sec quicker than in Sunday's race, while Capirossi shaved 0.3sec off his fastest race lap.
"It was good to test at the track today, as we were able to compare with yesterday's times and see how we were progressing against the best times from the race," said Chris.
"We had some new parts from Suzuki on the engine, chassis and electronic sides, and we certainly found some positives and some negatives - which is what testing is all about - and we have certainly got a good direction to go in from that.
"Hopefully Suzuki can work on the things we've found here and produce something good for the Phillip Island test next month.
"We consistently made steps with lap-times today and the new Bridgestone tyres seemed to suit the bike well and the whole package seems to have adapted to the change," he confirmed.
"I think that overall it was a good day for the first day of testing," added Loris. "I did a lot of laps and never stopped for a break all day, we think it might rain tomorrow so we needed to do a lot of things today.
"I think that Suzuki has made a good job to improve the engine, but we still need to work more in the same way to make it even better. The tyres were good and the feeling is that not different to what we have been using.
"It was good to have a full day's working because we were able to try a lot of things and compare them in similar conditions. We need to believe 100% in the programme and I know we can still go a lot better than we are doing now!" he declared.
Testing continues on Tuesday.
