Troy Bayliss: "My riding style is exactly the same, nothing's changed!"

© Ducati Corse. Troy Bayliss passed the first test since his Donington crash with flying colours, the Australian bouncing back from injuries received a fortnight ago to set the quickest time in both free practice and qualifying at Valencia. After being given the OK to ride by circuit medics late yesterday afternoon, Bayliss eased himself back into the swing of things in the morning with fastest time and then set a new circuit best lap in the afternoon with a time of 1m34.599s, half-a-second quicker than Neil Hodgson's 2003 record.

Despite some discomfort in both his injured hand and groin area, Troy was relieved to find that his performance out on the track had not been affected. "Everything's going good" he declared. "I think the track is not in such a good condition for grip so we did OK considering. I've done better laps in testing before but on the race tyre it's as good as we've ever done and I'm happy with that, considering that I'm not in the best of shape. Honestly it's a little bit awkward with my hand but it's not actually affecting me which I'm happy about. The other bits and pieces are tender and I'm taking the right precautions to try and help everything. I can't say I'm feeling fit but the last month I've been very healthy and this has all helped me to get back into shape and into a good condition. My riding style is exactly the same, nothing's changed!".

Team-mate Lorenzo Lanzi was seventh quickest today, but not that far off the pace of second and third placed men Ruben Xaus (Ducati) and James Toseland (Honda). "I didn't go too bad but not as quick as during the winter tests when I was never out of the top 3 or 4", commented Lorenzo. "We concentrated mainly on getting the right set-up for Sunday, when it will possibly be dry. We tested several tyres for the race distance and the pace wasn't great but I saw that even the other guys were struggling a bit as well. We always used one bike to try and get the best from the hard tyre at the front and when we put a softer tyre on the other bike, we didn't use it in the end because we preferred to continue to work on this one, which was giving good results. However I'm up near the front and the starting-grid will be decided tomorrow."

Qualifying times: