After Qatar thriller

_{source: moto.racing-live.com}

With the dust still settling after a thrilling Qatar Grand Prix, the Repsol Honda Team wound open the garage doors and returned to the Losail circuit today for a profitable day of testing.

American rider Nicky Hayden, fresh from his brilliant second place finish in yesterday's race, put in 52 laps of the 5.383km (3.343 mile) track on his Honda RC211V, focussing on chassis settings in the morning and trying some new Michelin tyres in the afternoon.

The weather was a little better than yesterday's very windy conditions which had forced Hayden and team-mate Dani Pedrosa to adjust their riding to prevent their Repsol Hondas being blown sideways as the front wheel lifted when hard on the throttle. In slightly cooler temperatures than race day, Nicky Hayden today recorded a best lap of 1m 56.36s as he fine tuned his Showa suspension set-up and gathered valuable data for Michelin and his team.

Preparation now begins for the next Grand Prix in Turkey on April 30. After scoring two second places in the first two races of the year, the Repsol Honda Team will be determined to take their first victory of the season at the Istanbul Park circuit in three weeks time.

Nicky Hayden 1m 56.36s - Laps completed : 52
"We definitely had a few things we wanted to test this morning, mainly some suspension settings, and our results today should help us further down the road.
Also for me there were a couple of parts of the track yesterday that I didn't quite have wired, like the first gear hairpin, so it was nice to able to try and work on my speed myself. The big thing on this bike is keeping it stable getting into some of the corners and we made some improvement there - it was well worth the time here today. I want to say thanks to the team for all their hard work, and I'd like to thank Michelin and Repsol and all the sponsors too. Now we go home for a few weeks, think about it all and get ready for the summer - that's when it's all gonna start happening!"

Losail - 09/04/06 (unofficial lap times)

1. Marco Melandri (Fortuna Honda) 1m 55.95
2. Valentino Rossi (Camel Yamaha) 1m 56.23
3. Nicky Hayden (Repsol Honda) 1m 56.36
4. Colin Edwards (Camel Yamaha) 1m 56.39
5. Sete Gibernau (Ducati) 1m 56.63
6. Loris Capirossi (Ducati) 1m 56.69
7. Toni Elías (Fortuna Honda) 1m 56.95
8. James Ellison (Yamaha Tech3) 1m 58.11