Hayden praises Honda's effort

Although Dani Pedrosa's Sachsenring win remains Repsol Honda's only win of the season so far, the works bikes have closed on the Ducatis and Yamahas in recent races, and fended off the challenge from Suzuki. Pedrosa has also taken his second consecutive pole in today's Phillip Island session.

"I've got no complaints about the bike right now," Hayden said. "Sure, the beginning of the year was a nightmare. But the testing's paid off for us. Every test this year we've really taken advantage of and worked a lot for me to get comfortable on the 800cc.

"It would have been real easy for my guys to slack on Monday and Tuesday after they've been on the road, but they ride in there from sun-up to sundown and those test days have helped us. Also the Michelin tyres definitely seem to be working better."

Honda brought a new fairing and swing-arm to Phillip Island, but Hayden said only the latter was worth using in the race.

"The fairing we tried but in the wind it was worse," he explained. "But we are using a different swing-arm this weekend that I used at Motegi in the test.

"On corner entry it's not as good under hard braking, it's a little bit too stiff. There I didn't like it, but here there's not as much hard braking and it gives better traction, so I'm using that."

He said recent chassis changes had been less productive, and his biggest improvement had simply come from his own acclimatisation to a revised chassis that he has used since Catalunya in June.

"We had a new chassis at Brno, I didn't like there but that track is so special," said Hayden.

"We tried it again at the Misano test but kept finding it didn't work. We also tested it at Motegi - it was the same chassis that I didn't like but they modified something on it, but it still wasn't good to go so we're pretty much back to where we were at.

"At Barcelona we got a chassis that I liked and I could ride, rather than just crashing when I tried to push. The rider can make the difference."

Hayden reckoned improvements to the engine cooling had also made a difference to his form.

"The engine's running better," he said. "We definitely fixed the problem of running hot - that really killed me for a while. The engine's more reliable and that hasn't hurt things."