By Peter McLaren

Just as he had done at November's test, Nicky Hayden pulled a record-breaking qualifying lap out of the bag to finish the January Sepang outing on top - and also set his best ever race-tyre lap - but on a bike he doesn't expect to race.

With Honda's pneumatic-valve engine not improving as quickly as required, Hayden had reverted to a standard spring-valve '07 engine inside the new '08 chassis for the opening day at Sepang, then evaluated the latest version of the pneumatic engine on day two, before switching back to the conventional '07 engine for most of the final day.

Hayden and Honda's dilemma is that the standard engine remains more powerful, but the bike handles better with the pneumatic engine, which is also considered to be the best bet for the future.

"This morning we checked both engines back-to-back and then went with the standard engine all day so that we could just focus on tyres and bikes," said the 2006 world champion, speaking exclusively to Crash.net at the close of testing on Thursday.

"The pneumatic-valve engine - as much as I hate to say it, because I know it's the future and where we need to be - is just not fast enough. I mean the engine performance is not fast enough to check anything.

"It's a little bit frustrating, the season is so close and we're testing with an engine that we're not going to be racing with," he admitted.

Hayden then confirmed that, although he is quicker with the '07 engine, that is also far from perfect and he still hopes to race a more developed version of the pneumatic-valve engine at the Qatar season-opener on March 9.

"I hope so, because last year's engine is not bad, but it wasn't great - and those other bikes sure haven't slowed down since last year," he declared.

So when might the pneumatic-valve RCV engine return?

"I don't know what they're doing in Japan, but it just depends on how much work they're getting done and where we're at," Nicky replied. "I would love to say Phillip Island [January 30], but that's not far away..."