By Peter McLaren

The reigning double World Superbike champion was again one of the first out on track, after morning rain delayed proceedings, then notched up 60 laps during his second day with the YZR-M1 - setting a best time of 2mins 4.278secs.

With all riders improving their pace on day two, Toseland still sits two seconds from the top, but is now just 0.257secs from fellow Yamaha MotoGP rookie Jorge Lorenzo - who made his MotoGP debut at the previous Valencia test.

"I think a 2min 4secs is really quite an interesting lap time," Tech 3 team principal Herve Poncharal told Crash.net. "So far we are still using standard settings, a standard engine and quite standard tyres so I think there is plenty of room for improvement. But James is clever enough to understand that before we play too much with the bike he's got to learn and do a lot of laps - this is what he is doing and he is doing it really well.

"The whole team, Yamaha and Michelin are very pleased with him," Herve underlined. "He keeps his head cool. He is not too focussed on the lap time, like some newcomers are, which is good. Nevertheless, from yesterday to today there is clearly a big improvement, almost 1.5secs on the average lap time, and he is not yet pushing 100 per cent.

"Tomorrow is going to be very important. We'll cross our fingers for dry weather and, if so, I'm sure he will get into the 2min 3secs. At the moment, for me, he is ahead of where we expected him to be. This test is really just the first contact, so we are all very pleased," the Frenchman concluded.

While Toseland continued with the standard 2007 machine on Friday, team-mate Colin Edwards and new factory rider Jorge Lorenzo got their first taste of an early version of the 2008 M1 prototype.