Kawasaki rider Randy de Puniet finished Friday practice fastest of all, the Frenchman having edged out new world champion Casey Stoner as he closed to within 0.8secs of the best 990cc race lap from the 2006 Malaysian Grand Prix.

The opening day was also an overwhelming success for Bridgestone, whose riders occupied seven of the top ten positions. The Japanese rubber manufacturer later revealed that it has brought harder specification tyres to this weekend's event to combat the demands of the new asphalt, considered more aggressive than in the past.

"The new surface is very smooth and initially lap times were around five seconds slower than the best race pace that we saw in last year's GP, but these times were greatly reduced in the afternoon," confirmed Tohru Ubukata, Bridgestone's manager of motorcycle race tyre development.

"From today's results we can see that the newly laid track is more abrasive on tyres, so we have to use harder specs compared to last year and pre-season testing. There are different specs within the hard range, but generally the tyres we have are among the hardest tyres we will use this season.

"There is a lot of work to be done but, from a tyre point of view, the most important job is to understand the performance and consistency of the rubber over the 21 lap race distance. This is something we will work on tomorrow, weather of course permitting," he added.