The Repsol Honda Team was back in action at Sepang today following MotoGP’s traditional winter break. MotoGP rider Nicky Hayden got to grips with the latest version of Honda’s RC212V in typically tropical Sepang conditions, with ambient temperature reaching 35 degrees and track temperature 56 degrees.

2006 MotoGP World Champion Hayden spent the day getting a feel for the latest RC212V, riding more laps than anyone else and setting the eighth fastest lap. This is the first time that the 26-year-old has ridden a MotoGP bike since he had surgery to fix a lingering right-shoulder injury on December 1.

Nicky Hayden, fastest lap: 2m 02.558s (lap 64 of 85)

“It’s good to be back. Coming in here yesterday it was pretty cool because I had a line of mechanics and two brand new HRC factory GP bikes waiting on me, every nut and bolt was brand new, and to me that’s pretty cool.

Today didn’t go the best at the start. The chassis feels different to the prototype I tested last November. It took me a while to get a good feel from the front, though towards the end of the day we made some progress, doing some geometry stuff and a little bit of suspension.

I didn’t test any tyres today, we just used reference tyres because I wasn’t going fast enough. First we had to get the bike working better. The shoulder’s better, though I still need to get some more strength in it. So that’s day one in the books. Tomorrow we’ll see if we can try the pneumatic engine and test some tyres, we’ve got plenty of work to do and it’s a long way to go to Qatar.”