WITH THE start of the 2008 MotoGP just around the corner, Repsol Honda’s Nicky Hayden topped the first day of the penultimate preseason tests at Jerez today.

Hayden spent the day evaluating a modified RC212V chassis with revised stiffness character, as well as focusing on set-up changes. The 2006 MotoGP World Champion also recorded the fastest top speed at 282km/h-175.226mph.

Teammate Dani Pedrosa, who damaged his right hand in a crash at Sepang,in January, used his time to assess the strength of the injured hand. Short stints around Jerez were punctuated with ice compress on the damaged hand. Pedrosa hopes to make more progress in the second test session.

Both riders will start the season using 2008 RC212V engines with conventional valve actuation, as the 2008 RC212V pneumatic-valve engine is under development at HRC, where engineers are aiming to improve power delivery.

Nicky Hayden, fastest lap: 1m 39.200s (lap 84 of 107)

“All in all, a pretty positive day. I would definitely say this was the best first day of tests we’ve had so far this year. And we knew it was important, because the weather experts are saying there’s a really good chanced of rain the next two days. I tried a different chassis, it felt slightly better with a little more feel on the front, so we used that most of the day and it felt pretty good. We went through a few other things, not making big changes because we’re getting closer to the season now, just a few little settings changes, and when I thought things felt better the stopwatch normally went along with it, which is always good. At the end I did race distance and it didn’t feel too bad. We were able to get into the 40s on race tyres, though we still need to get in there a little deeper, we still need to improve a bit.”

Dani Pedrosa, fastest lap: 1m 41.352s (lap 37 of 37)

“The priority here is to check my physical condition. The hand still isn’t 100 per cent, today I couldn’t really do more than five laps at a time. The hand is very painful, especially during braking and direction changes. I am icing it after every ride in an attempt to keep the swelling to a minimum. I will continuing icing it tonight and we will see how it is tomorrow morning. If the swelling is okay and I feel okay, we will continue riding. Today I was just trying to ride at a safe pace for my condition, so we weren’t really able to do any work on the bike or with tyres.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 at 7:44 am and is filed under Moto GP [t], Grand Prix [t]. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.