The practice sessions in Malaysia ended today. There will be another three days practice starting on 30th January, this time in Australia, on Philip Island

Nicky Hayden completed the first MotoGP tests of 2008 with the fastest lap at Sepang today. The Repsol Honda man rode a stunningly fast lap on qualifiers to top the three-day session. He also set an impressive pace in race tri m, riding his best-ever Sepang lap on race tyres at 2m 01.6s.

The 2006 MotoGP World Champion spent most of the day riding his RC212V equipped with conventional valves after testing Honda’s new pneumatic-valve engine this morning. The Sepang weather was typically tropical today, with ambient temperature at 33 degrees and track temperature at 51 degrees.

Nicky Hayden, fastest lap: 2m 00.326s (lap 25 of 77)

“Today’s gone a lot better than the last couple and we’re feeling positive, I feel like I’m a lot closer than I was a year ago here. This morning we checked the pneumatic valve engine, then we just focused on the standard engine and this year’s chassis, working on the general set-up.

“I used qualifiers for my fastest lap and they worked well. After that we did a batch of front tyres because one of my weak points here is that sometimes I struggle when this track gets hot. So I did a batch of tyres at the hottest part of the day to improve on that. We hadn’t really tested any tyres for Michelin here until today and we wanted to do a long run. That run was decent, probably the best thing I’ve done all week. I did the best lap I’ve ever done round here on rac e tyres on lap 18, a 2m 01.6s. At the end of three long days that wasn’t too bad. I used a 16.5 on that run but I’ve also been trying some 16 rears here.

“Now we go to Phillip Island which is quite a different track with some long corners, some high-speed stuff and a lot of changes of direction. The big thing there is tyres so it’ll be really important to do some more tyre work with Michelin there. We will also do some more work with the pneumatic-valve engine. I’ve got faith in Honda, so hopefully they can make us proud. I think it’s going to be a good season, there&rsq uo;s a lot of guys going fast, a lot of guys motivated. It’s an exciting time, everyone’s at zero.”