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Ducati Marlboro Team and championship leader Casey Stoner dominated practice sessions at Brno - with exception of Frenchman Sylvian Guintoli, who used Dunlop qualifiers on his Yamaha in second free practice to set fastest time of the day. Other than Guintoli, the pace was on the side of Bridgestone riders, once again led by Stoner. John Hopkins was third fastest rider of the day, in front of Loris Capirossi, who has shown improvement in form on Czech circuit.

John Hopkins - Rizla Suzuki
Today went really well and it was great to get back on the bike after the break. I've been looking forward to getting back to a race weekend since before the race was even over at Laguna last month! It felt good out there today and I really enjoy Brno. This is the track that I have been riding a Grand Prix bike on the longest as I tested here when I was 16 - so I know it pretty well. I've worked hard today, and my Crew Chief Stuart Shenton gave me a really good set-up right from the start so all I had to do was ride the thing! We've worked with Bridgestone to get the best tyres for Sunday and the only other thing has just been little changes here and there to get the bike right. We've got a few ideas for tomorrow and I'm sure they will make a difference, but for now we are happy where we are and looking forward to the race.

Chris Vermuelen - Rizla Suzuki
Brno is a track that I don't have a lot of experience at, but I really enjoyed it last year and I felt comfortable out there straight from the start today. My confidence is still really high from Laguna and the guys gave me a good bike from the start. We've only had to make a few small changes and I can do the lap-times consistently. We still need to get an extra half-a-second or more to be right up there, but I am sure we will be able to find that tomorrow and in Sunday's race.

Valentino Rossi - Fiat Yamaha
Today has gone more or less okay for the first day and, as is usual on a Friday, we spent most of the day working on the set-up of our M1. This morning was okay and then this afternoon we made some more progress and we found out some interesting things, which we hope will help us tomorrow and on Sunday. Despite this we still have quite a lot to improve on; we can and must be faster! As for the tyres, the front tyre seems to be working quite well here but we have some problems at the moment with the rear, especially in acceleration. After a few laps the grip is less and then when you open the gas the bike is sliding quite a lot. This was the main problem we were trying to fix throughout the day, and one of the things we did was to make a small change to the parameters of the traction control. This seemed to help and in the last ten minutes this afternoon we felt some improvement and the situation was better. Regarding the set-up, we have also worked on the mapping and engine braking; I still have a couple of corners where the engine braking needs to be improved in order to give me enough confidence when I'm coming into the corner.

We had some new things to try out today, including a new fairing which is an evolution of the one that I used in Mugello. It has definitely helped us a bit, although the advantage it gives us is only small. We've tried pretty much all the new items we have here and tomorrow we will have more time to continue in this way to work out what will help us on Sunday. We will also concentrate on improving the durability of our race tyres with Michelin, because, as usual, this is going to be very important on Sunday. I hope that the weather will be good tomorrow because at the moment the track is quite slippery and in places it's tricky to ride.

Casey Stoner - Ducati Marlboro
I'm very happy to be back on the bike, it felt a little bit alien this morning because it feels like a long time since we were racing, but we've managed to get used to it pretty quick. The track, the tyres, the bike, everything seems to be working pretty well for me, I'm just happy to be back out there and we seem to be quite competitive again. This track is still a lot of fun to ride but now there seems to be a lot of areas that want to have you out of the seat, the surface isn't giving a really good feeling at the moment. We need a little bit more traction at those points where we're slipping and sliding. We also need to make a little improvement to the way the bike turns on the exit of the corners because we're losing a bit there.

Loris Capirossi - Ducati Marlboro
I'm very happy because we've worked effectively since this morning. This afternoon we made a few little changes which worked well, so I could do a lot of laps around 1m 59.5s. I did my best lap on my final lap even though I was stuck behind Nakano who was slower than me, so I think I could have gone even faster. We have some other set-up ideas to try tomorrow and another tyre to test, the tyre that Casey thinks is the best of the three tyres we have here and which I've yet to try. It looks like this could be a positive weekend. We are using the standard spec engine, because you need a lot of power here, and the chassis set-up we used at the Sachsenring which gives me a very good feeling. The atmosphere in the pits is very good, we are very focused and we are concentrating very hard to make sure we enjoy a very positive final part of the season. I'm pretty happy.

Randy de Puniet - Kawasaki Racing
I'm very happy to be here and on the bike after the long break. This morning was strange because some parts of the track were wet and some were dry but this afternoon the track was good and the temperature wasn't so high. We worked mainly on the tyres and suspension and, generally, I'm happy with my bike. I did a long run of maybe eight or nine laps, and my times were consistent and fast, but we need to improve things a little bit. I'm sure we will find some solutions this evening on how to get my lap times even better and maintain this standard during the practice tomorrow.

Nicky Hayden - Repsol Honda
We have a few new things that we're trying this weekend and so far we've yet to take a big step forward, but we'll definitely put our heads together tonight and see if we can move up. Obviously the tyres are a big factor and I have a few more options there that I haven't tried yet so we'll see how they look tomorrow.

Free Practice Results (Combined FP1 and FP2):