A great performance today by Nicky Hayden at the timed training sessions of the Portugese Grand Prix. Nicky Hayden will start off tomorrow heading the second row, after he finished today in fourth place, keeping up a good pace throughout the day.

Nicky Hayden today gave another fine perfromance on his Repsol Honda RC212V 2008, confirming the visible improvements he made a fortnight ago in Jerez. The Repsol rider was third in the free training session, finally falling to fourth – second row on the starting grid – in the timed sessions.

Nicky Hayden – 1’36.266 secs, 55 laps, 230 Km.

“We’re right there, but just missing that last little bit. Everything went relatively smooth today, though I definitely thought we were capable of being on the front row – bike, tyres, even the rider – but we just didn’t get it done. Race pace I don’t think we’re a long way off but definitely we could do with a bit more.

The Michelin tyres are working good, the bike’s good, we just need to get it better in the slow changes of direction. My ideal time had me third. On one of my fast laps I had to follow Toseland, when he wasn’t on a fast lap, through turn five and into six, which kinda ruined that lap. At the time I was pretty fired up about it. He was man enough to come and apologise, but at the time I didn’t want to hear sorry. It happens though, I’m sure I’ve got in somebody’s way, and I can get over it, it’s no big thing. It should be a good race, so long as no one’s sandbagging too much this week. Be nice to be on the podium, see what the weather does and see if we can get it done.”