By Stephen English

Michael Laverty was satisfied after a productive opening day to the British MotoGP at🌜 Silverstone.

The Ulsterman used the opening session of the day to try new K-Tech fo👍rks on the Paul Bird Motors෴port bike.

Having used Ohlins throughout the season the team has decided to evaluate the K-Tech forks today and afterwards Laverty was pleased with the results on track and also wit🅷h the added benefit of input from the British firm in the shape of a suspension engineer fo🌄r the weekend:

"We tried the new K-Tech🐎 forks and it gave us a little bit better feeling and more stable under braking. It was better over the bumps too. I went out in FP2 with the second bike on the Ohlins fork🎉s and it wasn't too bad but it felt a little better with the K-Tech and we also have one of their engineers in the garage with us this weekend so I think that we've got more chance to improve with them so we'll continue working."

Laverty finished the day 20th fastest, out of 23 riders, but was pleased with the progress made throughout the day which was run in difficul🍸t conditions with a strong crosswind affecting the riders throughout the lap:

"To finish the day 3.2s off the fastest guy wasn't too badཧ for a Friday. There was a lot of wind upsetting the bike in a few areas but the conditions of the track weren't too bad. It's good to know what the bike should feel like around here so when we used the Brno settings in FP1 immediately we made changes to get the bike back to normal. The last exit was the best and we improved the bike all the way through. I think that if we can get into the 2m 05s tomorrow morning and if we can do that as race pace we'd be quite good."

Racing at home for the first time as a Grand Prix rider meant that Laverty did not know what to expect at Silverstone but the PBM rider has been pleasantly surprised by the difference which incꦿluded functions for the Day of Champ💛ions on Thursday, which raised in excess of ?250,000, and other demands facing home riders:

"I've had quite a good reception here and a lot of fan support. It's been nice because at Europe♛an races I am usually in-cog-nito and able to cruise around but this weekend I've been quite busy. Every time I go out on the🐟 scooter I'm stopped for a picture or an autograph."