Newly crowned, and last ever, 250cc world champion Hiroshi Aoyama took to the track for his first ever MotoGP test aboard a Honda RC212V at Valencia on Monday.

The Japanese finished the half-day test slowest of the premier-class riders in 17th, but that might not be too much of a surprise considering he had been celebrating late into the night - and chose to switch off the electronic rider aids!

“Today we started a little bit later than the other riders as last night we celebrated my 250 title,” admitted the Japanese, still riding in Scot colours but for the new Interwetten Honda MotoGP team. “Yesterday my dream came true and today a new adventure starts. Even if I knew that I was going to ride a MotoGP bike, till yesterday I was 100 per cent focused on the 250.

“Today I tested a four-stroke MotoGP bike for the first time. We lapped without traction control and electronic system [anti wheeling] to get used to the new machine,” he confirmed.

“I was not used also to carbon brakes so today I concentrated to study the carbon brakes. For me everything was new today: new bike, new team so the first thing was to make laps and study the bike.

“Tomorrow we have the whole day to test, this would be very important as today we only completed 40 laps.”

Aoyama's best lap was 5.3sec behind pace setter Casey Stoner (Ducati) and 2.7sec behind top 250 graduate Marco Simoncelli (Honda), whom Aoyama beat to the 250 world title on Sunday.