Hayden, like the majority of his
MotoGP rivals, returned to the Misano circuit for a day of testing on Monday and - without any major changes - set the second fastest lap time, just 0.15secs behind world championship leader
Casey Stoner, the dominant winner of Sunday's race.
"I did a 1min 34.2secs lap on race tyres which is quite decent and it actually makes the first lap incident yesterday even more frustrating," admitted the outgoing world champion. "We were probably closer to the pace yesterday than even I thought because today, without really making any changes, we were able to go quite a lot quicker. Also when I ran off track yesterday it cut the tyre and so we weren't able to learn anything in the race. I'm not going to fool anybody and say we had anything to match Stoner but I was able to lap pretty comfortably in the 1min 34secs this afternoon."
Hayden, who had qualified on the front row for the grand prix, completed a mammoth 134 laps on Monday during 3.5 hours of flat out riding, the equivalent of nearly five race distances.
"We did some serious work with Michelin and they are really putting in the effort, though I can't say we found a whole lot because towards the end I went back to a reference tyre and did my best lap of the weekend," said the American. "We'll go to Portugal and try to use some this information."
Third fastest at the test was team-mate
Dani Pedrosa, whose turn two collision with
Randy de Puniet forced Hayden off the track.
"It can seem quite difficult to come back and test after such a disappointing race result - I only completed a couple of hundred metres before I was taken down - but once we were out on track the conditions were quite good and we could spend some good time testing tyres and also some settings adjustments," said the Spaniard. "I'm looking forward to the next race."
