In a repeat of his early pace at Le Mans two weeks ago, Repsol Honda's Dani Pedrosa was fastest during first free practice at Mugello - and that time went on to hand him overall Friday honours when rain flooded the afternoon session.

"In the morning we had a normal practice session and took the usual set-up and tyres selection process as far as possible. My lap-time was pretty good and we found a decent base setting for the machine as this was the first time for the RC212V at this circuit," said the Spaniard, who went on to finish tenth in the afternoon.

"It was unfortunate that the afternoon turned out to be wet because we still had quite a few ideas to try and improvements to make. To be honest I spent most of the afternoon session in the pit box as the conditions were so wet and it would have been foolish to push too hard out there. So for tomorrow we'll hope the weather is clear and we can practice and qualify in the dry although, looking at the forecast, I don't know if that is too likely!"

Team-mate and reigning world champion, Nicky Hayden, was eighth fastest this morning, then - after his fall in the wet at Le Mans - a cautious 14th in the afternoon.

"In the morning the track conditions were OK and we got a decent direction on our set-up options. This afternoon the surface was really treacherous at the beginning with a lot of standing water. After Le Mans I didn't have such a good feeling in the wet so I didn't feel as though I could push really hard and spent quite a long time finding the limit," explained Nicky. "I definitely need to build my confidence a little bit in the rain again. Still, we feel like we've got some ideas to take things forward tomorrow. I also tried a slightly wider fairing which seems to reduce the turbulence on the long straight here."

Hayden was the second fastest Honda along the main straight this morning - but that still left him only ninth quickest, behind four Ducatis, both Kawasakis, Rossi's Yamaha and team-mate Pedrosa's RC212V. Nicky was 11.1km/h slower than Casey Stoner's pace setting Desmosedici.