Honda apologise for Hayden explosion.

Hayden arrived at the Sachsenring fresh from his first podium of the season, at Assen, but suffered a fall when he lost the front of his factory RC212V in the morning session.

The American went on to suffer electrical problems, before his day ended with a huge engine failure that left debris, oil and smoke along the home straight. When the smoke cleared the chequered flag was waving with Hayden just 16th on combined times, having been the only rider to lap slower in the afternoon than in the morning.

"Well this was a tough day for sure," confessed Nicky. "This morning I had a few issues with one machine at the beginning of the session, switched bikes and did a few laps but then I had a pretty minor crash into Turn 12. I hurt my hand a bit but basically it's OK. Because of the problems on the first bike I lost about half of that session. Then in the afternoon we were looking to improve things but I had an electrical problem and then an engine let go and made quite a mess of the front straight. So unfortunately we didn't really learn a whole lot about the chassis, set-up or the tyres today. We'll just have to sort a few things out tonight and get ready to put things straight tomorrow."

"Unfortunately, through no fault of his own, Nicky couldn't settle into a rhythm today," sympathised Repsol Honda team manager Makoto Tanaka. "He had some electrical problems with his machine in the morning and then in the afternoon an engine broke. I'm sorry about this because we were hoping for a strong start for Nicky after his great performance in Assen. So, we must work very hard to rectify things for him tomorrow."

Team-mate Dani Pedrosa had a much better day, the 2006 pole sitter finishing third fastest and the top Honda rider.

"We made some good progress today and finished by increasing the pace quite a lot which is positive," said the Spaniard. "This afternoon I was able to put in a run of around 14 laps and steadily improve the lap time - and I think I could have gone even quicker on my last laps if I hadn't encountered some traffic. Casey Stoner is looking very fast though and seems to have quickly found a good set-up so we must work really hard to move things forward for tomorrow. The new surface here has made it better in some places, but there are some new bumps too."