Dani Pedrosa followed his podium at Estoril by leading both practice session at Motegi. De Puniet showed he was on form by ending the first two free practices in second place, on combined times, after putting in blistering performances in both the morning and afternoon sessions. Valentino Rossi spent much of the afternoon on his backup bike as his new engine blew during the afternoon session. Championship points leader Casey Stoner strugged with his chassis setup and came in with the 5th fastest time.

Dani Pedrosa - Repsol Honda
As a first day today went quite well and the pace I could maintain was pretty fast and consistent, so I am happy so far. It was hot in the morning session and then it got even hotter in the afternoon, but still the balance of the bike felt good. I like this track and we must continue to improve the set-up tomorrow because this is only the first day and for sure our rivals will be working hard to overtake us. I am very happy to have signed for Honda again today and I hope we can continue this weekend in the positive way we have started.

Randy de Puniet - Kawasaki Racing
That wasn't a bad day! This morning we worked on the settings on the bike and this afternoon we tried a harder compound tyre, which was better for longevity because I did 20 laps on it and my time at the end of the session was still very good. We can improve a few bits and pieces, including adjusting the rear suspension slightly and perhaps working with a different rear tyre, but already, it's pretty good and I'm happy.

Marco Melandri - Gresini Honda
I'm really satisfied with this first day of work. The bike has improved a lot in terms of power delivery and engine braking thanks to the new mapping that we received this morning. I'm happy because the bike is much more manageable now. I'm also happy with our choice of tyres - we've worked well with Bridgestone today and I hope to make another small step forward with my race pace tomorrow. This is a particularly difficult track to manage fuel. The heat today was most unusual for this time of year but the forecast is for the weather to change. I'm happy because we'll be ready for wet or dry conditions.

John Hopkins - Rizla Suzuki
The day went pretty good straight away as the Bridgestone tyres worked really well and so did the Suzuki. We've had a play around with a couple of things including the suspension, but we haven't had to do a whole lot of set up because it all seemed to work well right out of the box. We'll try a couple of things tomorrow and test the durability of one of the best tyres from today, but all-in-all we're in pretty good shape and everything seems to be going well.

Casey Stoner - Ducati Marlboro
I'm a bit disappointed with today because we couldn't find a good set-up and we just went around in circles. This afternoon we tried something with the chassis but it didn't work and we didn't have enough time to go back to the same settings we had this morning, so we spent a lot of time making a lot of changes and it definitely wasn't a great day. To be honest there isn't one area where we have a big problem, we just need to generally improve in a lot of areas, so tomorrow we will start again with the bike settings we had this morning and we will continue working from there in a different direction. I'm confident we can improve because this morning's set-up wasn't bad at all.

Free Practice Results (Combined FP1 and FP2):