Hayden denies Melandri new parts claim

Reigning world champion Nicky Hayden has denied his struggling factory Honda RC212V 800 will be equipped with a range of new parts for this weekend’s French GP in Le Mans.

In the pre-event press conference this afternoon, Italian Marco Melandri had said he would keep an eye on the performance of Repsol Honda duo Hayden and Dani Pedrosa, believing they had a raft of new parts to test.

But the American denied his V4 would feature new parts to help bolster Honda’s struggling performance in France.

He told MCN: “We have nothing new. We got something on the throttle bodies that should make it smoother off the bottom. I’m not sure where he (Melandri) got that from but I wish I could say he was right.”

Hayden received an engine upgrade at the last round in Shanghai and said he expected some new parts to be available for a scheduled test session on Monday after the Le Mans clash.

“Maybe on Monday we’ll see something. They (Honda) still got all week to work and maybe fly something out on Saturday,” said Hayden, who has endured a torrid defence to his world crown with a lack of horsepower, top speed and fragile confidence in the front end seriously hampering his early season challenge.

Le Mans is hardly a confidence inspiring venue for Hayden to try and turn round his fortunes too, with his previous best MotoGP result in France only fifth in 2006.

He added: “There’s a lot of corners where you’ve got to accelerate hard out of and that hurts is. For me it’s always been a tough track but we’ll see what happens.”