Valencia, Spain

Opinions about the proposal for a single tire manufacturer are still divided among the riders, but there is one thing that all of them agree on: They are going to miss the breathtaking sensation of pushing the astonishingly grippy qualifying tires to their very limits. Nicky Hayden has said the tires are so good, that "you get off the bike and you're shaking." For riders so used to being right on the edge to be shaking takes something quite remarkable.

So there was some disappointment when the weather on Saturday started off as gray and wet as it had been on Friday. It looked like the last chance to use qualifiers might be gone, but as the afternoon started, the rain stopped, and the track started to dry out.

The track filled quickly once qualifying started. With the race expected to be dry, teams and riders were anxious to find a race setting that might work on Sunday. After three drenched sessions of free practice, they had learned more than they needed to know about riding in the wet.

The track was still cool, and spotty in patches, so times came down slowly. It took 5 laps before the times even got into the 1'34s, Randy de Puniet the first to crack that barrier on his LCR Honda. De Puniet was joined seconds later by Loris Capirossi, then Shinya Nakano, the Japanese Gresini Honda rider taking half a second off the Frenchman's time, with a lap of 1'34.437.

Three minutes later, Nakano's time was beaten, Nicky Hayden taking over the top spot with a 1'34.351. The Kentucky Kid had been fastest in all three wet sessions, and was showing he was quick in the dry too. Hayden was on a strong run, going on to take 3/10ths off his time on the next lap, with a time of 1'34.009.

His team mate, with whom Hayden had been engaged in a war of words by proxy, was not about to let Hayden run away with the session, and with 15 minutes gone, set the 2nd fastest time with a lap of 1'34.195.

Central European Summer Time ends at 3am Sunday morning, and while that means an extra hour in bed for most Europeans, it could end up confusing the many MotoGP fans who live elsewhere. For with the clocks going back an hour in Europe, that could throw the schedules of fans based in the US or Australia into disarray.

The final round of MotoGP in Valencia, Spain, is due to start at the regular race start time of 2pm. But that is 2pm CET, or Central European Time, rather than CEST, Central European Summer Time. Clocks in the US and most of Australia aren't due to change for another week, so for fans there, the race may be an hour later than they thought it would.

It goes beyond the scope of this website to list the race start time in every possible time zone - the official MotoGP.com website has a nifty time zone checker for that - but by using the invaluable tools on the Time And Date website at http://www.timeanddate.com/, we can calculate that the race will start at 9am EDT or 6am PDT in the US, and midnight at EDT in Australia, for fans in Sydney.

If you want to see what time the race will start in your time zone, then check this page on the Time And Date website.

Two things dominated the first day of practice at the final MotoGP round in Valencia: Rain, and Nicky Hayden. Rain has lashed the circuit all day, turning the adjacent campsite into a mudbath, and making the going treacherous around the circuit.

Added to the rain was the cold, temperatures hovering around 14 degrees Celsius, or the high 50s Fahrenheit. So not only is the rain causing grip problems, but the chill conditions are reducing grip even further. As a consequence, and rather unsurprisingly, a lot of people have been off into the gravel.

Casey Stoner got away with just a scare. Though his crash in FP1 looked scary, coming as it did at a fair speed round Turn 13, the Australian landed luckily, and didn't injure himself. Valentino Rossi also came away unscathed from a lowside in Turn 14. One of the slowest corners on the track, Rossi almost managed to catch the rear as it went away from him, but couldn't quite lever the bike back up onto the fat part of the tire.

Unluckiest team of the day were the Alice Ducati men. Toni Elias came off after a semi-highside, and has had a generally miserable day, finishing bottom of the pile and 6 seconds off the pace. But while Elias was relatively unharmed, Sylvain Guintoli is battered and bruised, after banging his knee and his behind in a big highside during FP2.

The other constant factor was Nicky Hayden. The American was fastest in both morning and afternoon sessions, and was clearly at home both on the track and in the rain. Hayden is just a few hundredths faster than his team mate Dani Pedrosa, but he was unlucky not to be much further ahead. Coming round on a very quick lap with a few minutes to go, Hayden nearly overcooked Turn 12, and pulled into the pits for new tires, after having been half a second up at the third intermediate checkpoint.