Repsol Honda riders Nicky Hayden and Dani Pedrosa made a solid start to this week’s Dutch TT at Assen today, placing fourth and ninth fastest after the first two practice sessions.

In sunny but blustery conditions Hayden and Pedrosa were second and third fastest this morning. Both riders improved their times this afternoon, though Pedrosa dropped several places while trying out different settings. Hayden is using the pneumatic-valve RCV engine for the second time this weekend while Pedrosa sticks with the conventional spring-valve engine.

This year’s Dutch TT is a particularly historic event. Assen is the only MotoGP track surviving from the World Championship’s inaugural year in 1949, making this the 60th consecutive World Championship event at the Dutch venue.

Nicky Hayden, 4th fastest, 1m 37.012s

“It’s nice to finally see a little bit of summer weather starting to hit Europe. The track is in great condition, they did a great job of having it clean, so we were able to get up to speed a lot faster than last year. All in all it’s been a pretty solid day. We made a little bit of an improvement this afternoon. I wasn’t able to improve my best time by much but I was able to be a lot more consistent out there. I was hoping to go a little quicker at the end which didn’t happen. The bike’s working pretty well here but we’re certainly going to have to step it up a bit to get in there and be really competitive. We’ve got a few ideas to try and make it a little bit better tomorrow, the rider too.”