The Alice Team's new all-rookie line-up of Niccolo Canepa and Mika Kallio got their first taste of 2009 Ducati machinery at the start of the Jerez test on Wednesday, when the Italian was the fastest of the five Desmosedici riders present.

Canepa set a best lap time of 1min 42.074sec during 50 cold and windy laps of the Spanish circuit, placing the former factory test rider ninth out of the 14 riders and 2.5sec from the top.

"I am very satisfied by the lap times registered today because we haven't done any modification on the chassis of the bike," he revealed. "We started with a good base set up and I preferred to don't touch the bike to first understand its reactions in each part of the circuit. The bike has surely improved compared to last year. Tomorrow, if the weather conditions will allow us, we will try to make some modification on the set up of the bike to improve even more my feeling with it."

250GP graduate Kallio completed 64 laps, the best of which was 0.763sec slower than Canepa but 0.1sec ahead of former MotoGP runner-up Sete Gibernau.

"This is the second time on a MotoGP bike and I can consider my self quite happy on how things went," said the Finn, who claimed eleventh in the end of day rankings. "Lap times aren't great, but at the moment this isn't the priority. First of all I have to know the bike better. We have done a good amount of laps and I hope to do even more tomorrow because is really important for us. I have a good relationship with the team and I am very happy to begin this adventure."