Hayden still searching for ideal setting
Added on Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 by Carole Nash Editor
Hayden still searching for ideal setting
Nicky Hayden will be going back to the drawing board before heading to France after another difficult weekend in Jerez.
The American has struggled early on to get to grips with the notoriously difficult Ducati and the Bridgestone tyres and with just five championship points to his name from the opening three rounds, there are fears that the 2006 champion could follow in the footsteps of last season’s Ducati flop Marco Melandri.
Speaking after a 15th place finish at Jerez, Hayden admitted, “I was nervous that physically it would be a tough race but it turned out to be a lot worse than we expected.
“In the beginning I struggled a lot again with a full fuel load and I made a mistake on the first lap – I was trying to make some positions up and I actually lost some. I tried to recover but something was wrong with the set-up of the bike.”
Hayden also explained his difficulties with the new Bridgestone tyres, having worked with Michelin prior to the introduction of the single tyre regulation.
“I can’t make the harder compound work well with my bike and I have to go with the softer one but today even those didn’t start to work well until I got a lot of heat into them,” he added. “I did my best time on the 17th lap so there is something we have definitely to work on with the team. We need to look at the data and think up something different for the next race.”
Ducati’s MotoGP Project Director Livio Suppo moved to calm the 27-year-old’s concerns however, with the team focused on providing him with the ideal package ahead of Le Mans.
“It has been a really difficult Grand Prix for Nicky on the back of two tough weekends and two crashes,” he claimed. “We have a little break now during which time we can sit down and work out how to get him back to the level he was at in the winter tests, which would lift him much higher up the order.”
