Hayden heads last warm up

Nicky Hayden’s lap of 1’33.247 gave the Ducati rider the fastest time of the 20-minute warm up session at Valencia on Sunday morning, as the MotoGP class prepared for the last race of the season.

The American was 0.031s ahead of World Champion Jorge Lorenzo (Fiat Yamaha) on the timesheet, with pole man Casey Stoner (Ducati Team) third at just over a tenth of a second down on his team-mate.

Dani Pedrosa (Repsol Honda), Colin Edwards (Monster Yamaha Tech 3) and Marco Simoncelli (San Carlo Honda Gresini) completed the top six, with Valentino Rossi (Fiat Yamaha) – who starts his final race with the team from the second row of the grid – in eighth.

Carlos Checa (Pramac Racing) had a minor run-off during the session and ended in 17th. The MotoGP race starts at 2pm local time.