German MotoGP: Nicky Hayden gains more confidence

Nicky Hayden’s sudden upsurge in confidence continued in Germany today, the American enjoying another positive outing on Ducati’s factory GP9. Having scored a season best fifth place in Laguna Seca earlier this month, the 2006 world champion led the way for much of today’s rain-hit session, which started on a wet track that dried out rapidly. Impressively fast on both wet and slick tyres, Hayden had to settle for eighth place on the final timesheets with a best time of 1.23.367. That was only 0.588s slower than Ducati team-mate Casey Stoner and the Kentucky rider lost five places in the final seconds of a closely fought session. Hayden said: “It’s the first time I’ve led a session and while it was mixed conditions I’ve got to look for any positive I can against these guys. So what it was wet, I was still on top and that’s good for me. I’ve been starting to feel more comfortable and getting the bike to work for me so I feel more comfortable in the wet and dry. My overall position still sucks but when the chequered flag came out I was third, so I wish it had come out 30 minutes earlier or it had started raining. We’ve tamed the pumping down and as far as machine-wise that’s the biggest thing. But I would say its all a package with the bike and the team. They’re starting to understand a bit more what I like and how we can work through problems. But we still got a lot of stuff to go and we’re eliminating problems slowly.” Hayden said one big advantage at present was his ability to stick with a set-up rather than constantly make changes to try and improve his pace. He did though try new handlebars today aimed to compliment a raised seating position that he first tried last month in Catalunya. “I got different handlebars this week, which sounds crazy to be trying in the middle of the season. But we have changed the back of the bike so much and the riding position that we need to change the front a bit too to get the balance back. They’ve been moved up and a little bit wider. I’m sitting up a lot more on the bike with the raised seat so we’re getting the whole centre of gravity sorted. We’ve found a direction too with the electronics and that makes such a big difference. I still think we can improve a lot, because compared to Casey he’s still a lot quicker on the straight. He gets off the corner good but the more date they get on that the better. They can change it using my data because we start off with Casey’s data from last year.”

 

 

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