The 2006 MotoGP world champion  and his Repsol Honda team say goodbye to the trainings in Australia and head again to Malaysia to continue with the next week tests.

Nicky Hayden and Repsol Honda completed their second 2008 pre season test today, the American ending this Phillip Island session with the second fastest lap time. After yesterday’s rainfall, today’s conditions were perfect: sunny with ambient temperature at 1 9 to 22 degrees and track temperature at 35 degrees.

Hayden and his hard-working crew dedicated the day to fine-tuning chassis set-up and evaluating Michelin race tyres, though like most other riders he did his best lap on qualifying tyres. The team will continue its pre season work at Sepang, Malaysia, next Tuesday and Wednesday, February 5 and 6.

Nicky Hayden was the team’s lone ride throughout this test, team-mate Dani Pedrosa recuperating in Europe from a hand injury sustained at Sepang last week. The date for Pedrosa’s return to action has yet to be fixed.

Nicky Hayden, fastest lap: 1m 29.734s (lap 71 of 102)

“We ended up not too bad but it’d be nicer to be faster on race tyres. To be honest, it’s been a frustrating couple of days here. We got into the 31s about the fourth exit from the pits on the first day and really we haven’t been able to go any faster since then, except with the qualifiers, which were good.

We’ve chased our tail a bit and I haven’t really found a batch of race tyres I like. I struggled a lot when I was here for last year’s race, but I did find something I liked. I didn’t have that option this week, so I can’t say I’m completely happy with the combination of bike, rider and tyres.

We tried the pneumatic-valve engine and the conventional spec engine in the new chassis at this test. We did a lot of tyre testing with Michelin using the conventional engine. The chassis did some good stuff but not enough through this fast stuff here.

We left Sepang last week in a positive way and it’s still early days, there’s a lot of work still to be done. Now we go back to Sepang for two days, we’ve got a few days off and then keep trying to chip away at it.”

MotoGP Test Results

1. Casey Stoner Ducati 1:28.777 (51)
2. Nicky Hayden Honda 1:29.734 (102)
3. James Toseland Yamaha 1:29.754 (89)
4. Andrea Dovizioso Honda 1:29.780 (90)
5. Colin Edwards Yamaha 1:29.795 (56)
6. Chris Vermeulen Suzuki 1:30.216 (73)
7. Alex De Angelis Honda 1:30.438 (91)
8. Shinya Nakano Honda 1:30.728 (89)
9. Toni Elias Ducati 1:30.966 (97)
10. Randy De Puniet Honda 1:30.978 (115)
11. Sylvain Guintoli Ducati 1:30.983 (58)
12. Marco Melandri Ducati 1:31.377 (108)
13. Loris Capirossi Suzuki 1:31.508 (75)
14. Anthony West Kawasaki 1:31.957 (90)