Crescent Suzuki team boss Jack Valentine has confirmed that John Hopkins is receovering well after another bout of surgery to fix the problematic finger he broke at Brno earlier this year and he will be 100 per cent for the Phillip Island opener in February.

Hopkins had inital procedures on the knuckle he marmalised in a MotoGP free practice crash but it wasn't quite fixed and he had to ride the remainder of the British Superbike season in a lot of pain - prompting speculation about how fat he could have been if he was fully fit.

"John Hopkins was over recently and I'm happy to say that he looked good and his finger is coming along very well. He's got good movement in the joint to the hand and now he's working on getting the knuckle and first part of the finger to move as it should," said Big Jack.

"His doctor seems happy with the progress and everything is on course ok for Australia. For Phillip Island we are making his bike with more-or-less the same set-up as his BSB bike, so he'll be able to jump straight on it and feel at home immediately. After that he'll get on working with all the new stuff as usual. He is already very pumped up about next year and can't wait to get on the bike again.

"Our co-operation with Yoshimura has already started: They're working very hard and are as excited as we are about the season ahead. We are expecting two engines from them in mid-January and once we get them, we'll build the bikes, put them on our dyno and test them before shipping them to Australia. It's going to be a bit tight, but we'll manage ok."