Hayden was fastest of all at Sepang last week, using qualifying tyres and the standard (2007) engine specification inside the 2008 chassis, but stuck exclusively to race tyres on the opening day in Australia, in which he was ranked eighth fastest - and over a second behind the best race tyre lap of the day, set by reigning world champion Stoner.

But the American handed Honda plenty of data by completing a huge 107 laps, his morning having been spent running the two engines back-to-back, before focusing on the more powerful standard engine specification in the afternoon.

"This is a completely different track to Sepang so we needed to reconfirm what we learned last week," explained Nicky. "That's been the plan today, so we've been using reference tyres, we've not been doing any tyre testing so far, mainly just checking settings. This morning we checked both engines because the team needs data with the pneumatic-valve engine too. The track seems to be in great shape and the weather's good, so we've gotten a lot done."

Tomorrow (Thursday) the 2006 world champion will continue working on chassis and suspension settings and also commence tyre testing - Phillip Island being a notoriously tough racetrack for tyres.

Hayden's team-mate Dani Pedrosa is in Europe recuperating from an operation to fix the broken hand he suffered in Malaysia last week.

Although Hayden hopes to race the pneumatic-valve engine at the Qatar season-opener on March 9, much will depend on its rate of progress and a final decision isn't expected until after Pedrosa's return during the Jerez IRTA test from February 16-18.

Rookie Alex de Angelis was the lead Honda rider on Wednesday, in third position.