Home favourite
Dani Pedrosa, fastest with the new '08 on Wednesday, unexpectedly switched back to the '07 for the final day - and smashed his own Spanish GP pole position time by over one-second during two late qualifying tyre laps.
"Today we only worked on tyre testing with the 2007 machine because we have the most reference data for this," explained Dani. "We've got through a lot of work and this has been a profitable final test of the year."
Pedrosa's Thursday pace was also 1.4secs faster than his qualifying tyre lap with the '08 on Wednesday and the 2007 world championship runner-up hopes the new RC212V can be significantly improved during the winter test ban, which runs from December 1 to January 20.
"The HRC engineers have a lot of data to work with and can now prepare the machine for the next test sessions at the end of January. I think that we have quite a lot more work to do because we're still some way from where we'd like to be, but the signs are quite encouraging," he said.
"We have some time before the beginning of the 2008 season and there is plenty of scope for more improvements, so I hope we will use the time well. I have asked HRC for some similar things that I asked for in Valencia - plus many of the things from Valencia have been improved for this test. Now that there is some time we must focus on the areas that have not yet been improved," added the #26.
Team-mate
Nicky Hayden did set his best time with the new '08 machine, just 0.286secs slower than Pedrosa.
However, after spending the test developing the '08 - known to be underpowered at present - Hayden was still instantly faster in terms of race pace when he made a late switch back to the '07, which was thought to have been retired after the recent Sepang test...
"We spent a big part of the day on the new RC212V and tried the machine with qualifying tyres for the first time," stated Nicky. "The lap time I did was pretty good and I really didn't expect to go that much faster than on race tyres, so I'm pretty happy.
