Repsol Honda RC212V rider Dani Pedrosa was in dazzling form at Assen this afternoon, ending up just 0.032 seconds off pole position. Team-mate Nicky Hayden also enjoyed a strong qualifying session, the American fourth quickest, just 0.455 seconds off pole.

Pedrosa and Hayden were also impressive in this morning’s practice session, run on a damp and drying track, ending the outing in first and third positions. This afternoon’s conditions were dry but blustery, Pedrosa’s final lap taking him to a tantalisingly close to pole-sitter Casey Stoner. Hayden, using the pneumatic-valve RCV engine for the second race, might have done even better if he had had time to use his final qualifying tyre. He also lost some time on his fastest lap when John Hopkins crashed just in front of him as they attacked the high-speed Ramshoek left-hander in the closing stages of the hour-long outing.

Tomorrow’s 60th Assen World Championship TT is the ninth race of the 2008 season and the halfway point in the 18-race campaign.

Nicky Hayden, 4th fastest, 1m 35.975s

“This morning the bike was working quite good in the wet and on intermediates. That session sucked for learning much about the dry but I got some good experience out there on intermediates front and rear and it felt quite good, I was able to stay out and get a good feel for it. This afternoon seemed to go so quick. We tried a couple of little things on the front, but after the first run we had to go back to what we had before because the changes helped in some areas but overall they made it worse. We started putting our qualifiers and then I had an issue with the clutch which lost us some time in the tyre changes, so ultimately I didn’t get to use my last qualifier, so we had one bullet left in the chamber that we didn’t use. The Michelin qualifiers were working awesome round here, every one we put in I kept getting faster, so it would’ve been fun to fire the last one in there. It’s going to be a hard race tomorrow, I’m not making no predictions, we’ll see what we can do, go for the best result we can.”