Repsol Honda have tricky day in Malaysia

Dani Pedrosa is hoping for a dry weekend in Sepang as he looks to gain experience of the track with his new package, whilst Repsol Honda teammate Nicky Hayden is not averse to the idea of a flag-to-flag race on Sunday.

Dani Pedrosa - Sixth

`This morning we struggled because we lacked a bit of rhythm, but during the afternoon session I was able to improve both my feeling with the bike and my race pace. We worked on set-up, we tested some tyres and we have some more tyres to test tomorrow. Tyre choice is especially crucial here, so we will concentrate on that. Then tomorrow afternoon we will try to get a good grid position, which is also very important here. I hope we have two dry sessions tomorrow so we can keep on preparing for the race. Everybody is fast at Sepang because we all test here during the winter, so everyone´s got a lot of data at their disposal. This winter I only tested one day here and the package I have now is completely different to what I had then. As for the Bridgestone tyres, they are different to what I am used to here, so I have been trying to adapt my riding style.

Nicky Hayden - Tenth

`Obviously I don´t like to be down in tenth, but we have made a little bit of progress today. The track was quite dirty this morning, there was a lot of sand around, but it seemed to clean up all right. This afternoon´s session was quite tricky, there was a light rain pretty much the whole session, but it´s so hot here that the rain is pretty much gone before it even touches the ground. The bike feels pretty decent and the tyres seem okay, so I´m confident that we can improve, that's the plan. It was quite strange this afternoon. If that had been the race it would have been interesting – it was raining pretty heavy at one point, everybody came into the pits at one point. It´s been doing that the last couple of afternoons, so maybe it´ll be like that on Sunday. We haven´t had a half-and-half race for a while, so maybe that would be quite cool. Now my foot´s better I can switch bikes and they´ve got a big wide pit road here, so it might be fun, but I´d better be careful what I wish for.´