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Nicky Hayden sets the pace on a rain-affected second

Ducati's Nicky Hayden set the pace on a rain-affected second day of testing at Jerez, though the American set his time on an almost-dry track near the end of the day

Hayden's lap of 1m40.755s was nearly a second faster than that of Karel Abraham on the Cardion AB privateer Ducati. Ben Spies was third fastest on the new factory Yamaha.

"Considering that the conditions weren't perfect, it's positive that we quickly come close to my best time from yesterday," said Hayden. "Now we hope the weather will let us work well tomorrow, because we'd like to improve some details before Qatar, especially with traction in the fast corners."

With the track damp and conditions windy and cold, not much activity took place until after midday when a serious downpour rendered the circuit totally wet for a while, offering up the opportunity for some to work on wet set-ups at least.

Some elected to sit out much of the day, including Hayden's team-mate Valentino Rossi.

Honda's Dani Pedrosa was one rider to make the most of the conditions, and the Spaniard completed 25 laps in total on the new 213V.

"I decided to go out when it started raining properly because it's always good to get some information about the behaviour of the bike in wet conditions before the beginning of the season, and even more important with a new bike," he said.

"Obviously, the set up of the bike was pretty standard on chassis and electronics, but I had good feelings riding it, the bike worked well and it gives me confidence.

"If it's not raining tomorrow we will go back to the testing programme we had planned for today: basically to try some new ideas for the chassis and the electronics and if we have time I'd like to do a race simulation."

Like his world champion team-mate Casey Stoner, Pedrosa did not record any flying 'dry' laps, the pair ending the day 12th and 19th in the times respectively.

Stoner decided against any serious running in the conditions.

Spies said that he was 'happy with his wet set up', while team-mate Jorge Lorenzo also completed more than 25 laps in the rain: "Today we started late because of the weather so we only managed to do 25 or 30 laps in wet conditions. Now we know that the bike is working quite well and is competitive, we were in second place in the wet behind Dani and the next rider, Cal Crutchlow, was a second behind.

"We still need to work on our electronics as we haven't got the perfect solution for Qatar. For tomorrow we haven't got anything new but we need to decide whether to put away some parts."

Pos  Rider             Team/Bike             Time       Gap
 1.  Nicky Hayden      Ducati                1m40.755s
 2.  Karel Abraham     Cardion Ducati        1m41.661s  + 0.906s
 3.  Ben Spies         Yamaha                1m41.726s  + 0.971s
 4.  Alvaro Bautista   Gresini Honda         1m42.711s  + 1.956s
 5.  Hector Barbera    Pramac Ducati         1m43.288s  + 2.533s
 6.  Ivan Silva        Avintia FTR-Kawasaki  1m43.613s  + 2.858s
 7.  Franco Battaini   Ducati                1m44.264s  + 3.509s
 8.  Michele Pirro     Gresini FTR-Honda     1m44.761s  + 4.006s
 9.  James Ellison     Paul Bird Aprilia     1m44.969s  + 4.214s
10.  Danilo Petrucci   Ioda Aprilia          1m45.336s  + 4.581s
11.  Colin Edwards     Forward Suter-BMW     1m47.968s  + 7.213s
12.  Dani Pedrosa      Honda                 1m49.822s  + 9.067s
13.  Jorge Lorenzo     Yamaha                1m50.088s  + 9.333s
14.  Cal Crutchlow     Tech 3 Yamaha         1m51.127s  + 10.372s
15.  Andrea Dovizioso  Tech 3 Yamaha         1m51.702s  + 10.947s
16.  Mattia Pasini     Speed Master Aprilia  1m51.772s  + 11.017s
17.  Stefan Bradl      LCR Honda             1m51.778s  + 11.023s
18.  Casey Stoner      Honda                 1m51.856s  + 11.101s
19.  Valentino Rossi   Ducati                1m51.910s  + 11.155s
20.  Randy de Puniet   Aspar Aprilia         1m52.397s  + 11.642s
21.  Aleix Espargaro   Aspar Aprilia         1m57.718s  + 16.963s
22.  Yonny Hernandez   Avintia FTR-Kawasaki

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