Hayden first team-mate to beat Stoner since 2007

Nicky Hayden became the first team-mate to defeat Casey Stoner fair and square - when both riders have finished and without any serious technical problems - since 2007, at Jerez on Sunday.

But the American was disappointed that, although he repeated his fourth place finish from round one in Qatar, he dropped from less than two-seconds from victory at Losail to over nine seconds adrift in Spain.

"Fourth place is no disaster but I was hoping to stay closer to the top three towards the end and put up a bit of a fight," confirmed the Ducati Marlboro rider. "I'm not happy to be nine seconds adrift but we're trying to build something here and we've had another solid weekend.

" The team, the bike, everything has been great this weekend but we just fell a couple of tenths short on race day. To be honest I thought we might find a little extra for the race, like we did in Qatar, but it wasn't to be.

"Like I said yesterday my guys worked like dogs to put me in this position today and we've got more to do tomorrow so I want to give a big thanks to them.

"This is the Ducati factory team and we don't jump up and down at fourth place but we'll take it. We got some great data to work from that should help us be stronger at Le Mans and hopefully we can keep this upward trend going."

Stoner finished one place and one second behind Hayden.

Marco Melandri technically finished ahead of Stoner at Le Mans 2008, but the Australian had suffered a serious engine problem while battling for the lead and was lapped twice.

Prior to that, Stoner's last defeat at the hands of a team-mate was when Loris Capirossi won the wet/dry 2007 Japanese Grand Prix, a race where Stoner finished a safe sixth to clinch the world championship.