American John Hopkins narrowly missed out on the top ten in the opening MCE Insurance British Superbike Championship free practice session, but promises there is plenty more to come as he gets more laps on the Lloyds British Moto Rapido Ducati at Brands Hatch.

Hopkins was utilising the opening session to run in a new engine on the Ducati, but getting back up to speed, he was just 0.748s adrift of Josh Brookes' pace-setting lap in 12th place. The 'Hopper' proved he is back and hungry for results as he replaces Jakub Smrz this weekend who is sidelined through injury.

Speaking after the opening session Hopkins said:

"The first practice went really well, it is still a steep learning curve and there is a lot to get used to again, especially being out on track with everybody and other bikes. We didn't do a whole lot of laps at the first test on the Indy circuit, but just enough to get comfortable. It was a good base setting and we went out with a new engine to run in this morning, spent quite a bit of time in the garage at the beginning of the session, but for me it was to keep getting more comfortable and we boxed that off well, made slight improvements to the bike and just assessing. The more laps on the bike, the more impressed I am with it and I think it is a great package. Now that I am starting to speed up a bit there are some improvements to get it to my liking - but so far so good. I think we are pretty happy with the lap times so far as it is only going to get better from there.

"To be honest I don't want to get ahead of myself as it is such a competitive field out there, but it has been extremely easy to get up to the speed we are at now and the team have said the Ducati is quite an easy bike to get to a certain place, but then it is climbing away that last half second where you have to make fine tuning and improvements with the setting. I expect the next second to come a lot harder than the initial lap time has, but so far, so good. I didn't get an actual clear lap this morning, normally my ideal time is quite similar to what my fastest lap is in all sessions - in most of my career it has always been that way as I always tend to be quite consistent. We were over half second quicker just because we didn't get a clear lap, so hopefully this afternoon we will see if we can get in that top ten."