Monster Yamaha's Josh Hayes had his first sessions on a fully dry track today aboard the YZR-M1 he is riding in place of Colin Edwards at the Valencia MotoGP round after being tenth fastest in the wet second free session yesterday.

Although the two-time AMA Champion was last on the timesheet, he has spent a lot of time analysing why it is different to his YZF-R1, thinking through the behaviour of the tyres and figuring out that a lot of how to ride it goes against what comes naturally to him, and how to fix that.

Here are just some of this thoughts after qualifying:

"It's more difficult for me with the high grip level in the dry, the bike is rigid, it's got stiff settings, it's tough. I'm trying to maximise my time on the bike and learn as much as I can that way. In doing that, I'm not really able to come in, take a breath and think about it but I'm enjoying my time riding the bike and it's different from what I expected," said Hayes, speaking to bikesportnews.com.

"You get a hint of what it is like in the wet, but in the dry the guys can really lean on these things. I got 20 per cent of clue yesterday of what it would be like today. I'm really having a difficult time turning the motorcycle and I'm laughing because I'm like: 'This is a fucking GP bike what do you mean it doesn't turn? This doesn't make any sense!'.

"Some things about it are very counter-intuitive. I made a mistake in some way of listening to people too much about 'this is how you ride the bike' and then I tried to do exactly that and I come in and they say 'this is why you're slower', and it's all the ways I would typically ride the bike anyway but I was told 'you gotta ride it like this!'.

"It has been quite the adventure and quite honestly I go out there thinking you have to do this and that, struggle, struggle, struggle, I come in, then I do my normal thing, pick up some time and I feel a little more comfortable in the process of doing it, a little less on edge and I end up getting a better feel for how it is supposed to be.

"This bike in the dry, it's very low, there's not a lot of transfer, it's stiff. To generate heat in the tyre you have to put a lot of pressure on them. I like the feel of the tyres because they are stiff but some of the things that are natural to me, like how to go faster on a race track, just don't work as it makes me fight the motorcycle."

Come back tomorrow for some more of Mr Hayes' thinkings...