"It was a hard weekend, today we found a couple of band aids for the problems we've had here," said Nicky, eighth in the race. "We only tested with race tyres and we improved our pace. I was able to go quicker than we went yesterday but still not enough. We tried a lot of solutions and I can't really say we really found any cures for the braking stability and for getting the bike to enter the corner better.
"We went through a lot of stuff which at least we can now rule out. We tried mainly setting changes and a few tyres, which could possibly work well for us at other tracks, which we needed to get a little bit of data on. It looked like the sky could open up any time, it stayed dry but it wasn't a day for the beach! I feel a little better now, so hopefully Mugello will go smoother for us."
This coming weekend will see Hayden ride a demo lap aboard a 2007 RC212V just before the start of the Indy 500 car race.
The only satellite team present at the test was San Carlo Honda Gresini, whose Bridgestone-shod riders
Shinya Nakano and
Alex de Angelis set the eighth and ninth fastest lap times.
Anthony West (Kawasaki),
Marco Melandri (Ducati), Erwan Nigon (Michelin/Honda test rider) and Olivier Jacque (Kawasaki) completed the Monday order.
Round six of the 2008
MotoGP World Championship, the Italian Grand Prix at Mugello, will take place on June 1 - when Honda's pneumatic-valve engine will make its race debut in the hands of former 500GP winner Tady Okada.
