Fruitful test for Repsol Honda.

The Repsol Honda pairing of Nicky Hayden and Dani Pedrosa headed the time sheets during the final day of testing at Phillip Island, setting the fastest times of the entire test.

As the new RC212V progressed, so did both factory Honda riders by improving their pace on race tyres, before taking the opportunity to try a flying lap on Michelin qualifying tyres towards the end of the day.

World Champion, Hayden was pleased with his day's work putting in a massive 101 laps on the prototype 800cc machine that will see its first competition at the season opener in Qatar on March 10.

The 25-year-old American soon found a positive combination of chassis geometry, tyres and suspension settings, which aided him in setting consistently quick lap times which he reduced to 1min 30.45secs on race tyres. Then, with the qualifier fitted, Hayden once again demonstrated the pace that took him to pole position in September's Australian Grand Prix by putting in a lap of 1min 29.52secs - the fastest time of anyone over the three-day test.

"The last day here was definitely the most positive of this test and also of the year so far. We found a few settings on the bike that I liked and made some good progress. I also did a longer run and the times were pretty consistent in the 1m 30s bracket on race tyres, which is positive too. It's not like we can call the dogs off yet though because we've still got some work to do!" joked a happy Hayden.

"We were fastest today on the qualifier and I really think that's down to Michelin's qualifying tyre working really well here. Also, a certain somebody wasn't at this test, so just because we're quickest today doesn't mean we can relax," he said alluding to Rossi's absence, "I want to say thanks to my team because I'm really happy with how well we're working together. Plus I've got a new Showa suspension technician and that's already going well too. Now we'll head to the next two tests and see where we stand then."

Pedrosa was also on the pace as his team ran through an extensive test schedule aimed at further improving his bike's set-up and maximising the potential from the new V4 engine. During a day spent gathering valuable data and testing many Michelin tyre options, the 2006 MotoGP Rookie of the Year set an impressive lap time of 1min 30.07secs on race tyres. This was well inside the race lap record for the 4.448km (2.764 miles) Australian circuit set in 2005 by Marco Melandri on the 990cc Honda RC211V. On his single flying lap on qualifying rubber, Pedrosa then recorded a lap of 1m 29.72s to finish just behind Hayden.

"We did a lot of work today on the engine and tyres, which is just what we planned from yesterday. I'm happy about the results and we improved a lot at this track over the course of the test which is important. We tested some aspects of the engine performance today and found some settings that have given us a good direction to work in. And we did quite of lot of tyre testing with Michelin that helped us too. The lap times on both race tyres and qualifying tyres were pretty good, so we have to keep on working at the next two tests to be ready for the season," said Pedrosa.

The Repsol Honda Team are gearing up for two further three-day tests at the Losail circuit in Qatar (13-16 Feb) and the Jerez circuit in Spain (23-25 Feb) before the opening race of what promises to be another gripping MotoGP season.