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Mid-way through his second year with the Ducati squad, Nicky Hayden has assessed how the campaign and bike are going
to date and the American is happy with the progress currently being made.
“We took a big step from last year
to this year, and I would hope to be able to do the same next year,” says Hayden. “The bike has improved a lot
from last year, and the engineers there are really committed to wanting to make it the best bike on the grid. I’ve seen
a lot of improvements from last year in terms of rideability, reliability, and it’s a more consistent bike. I think
the bike has a lot of potential that we haven’t even got to yet.”
On various aspects that require improvement
on the GP10, Hayden adds, “We’ve been having big problems with our starts lately, both Casey and I, but we can
work that out. I know Casey, he’s a good rider, so I’m sure if he thinks the bike needs to improve, I hope we
can improve it. But I think we have a good enough package to be winning races. Casey proved that in Qatar, if he didn’t
crash there, he would have won that race quite easily. But having said that, we still want to improve. We’ve seen a
lot of the other teams making steps, especially Honda, who seem to have made a big one since the start of the season. So we
need to do the same.”
Hayden is positive that the following test at the next round at Brno can be as productive
as last season’s.
“That test is important, as limited as testing time is now in MotoGP you really have
to take advantage of any extra time. The motors we get to test with don’t come out of our allocation,” he explained.
“So you hope for good weather and hope to make a breakthrough.”
“Last year at that test on the
Monday we changed something with the geometry and were able to take a little step from there, and my results basically improved
from that test on. It was something we found in the last 30 minutes of the test. It had rained in the afternoon, and we had
waited and waited, and the track finally dried. Everybody went out and was able to get some stuff in, so that’s important.”
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