Hayden taking positives from German visit

Ducati Marlboro’s steadily improving Nicky Hayden achieved his best qualifying result of the year so far Germany at round nine, but his hard work from Saturday was quickly undone in Sunday’s race as he dropped from fourth to 14th on the first lap.

The hard-working American battled back over the course of the 30 lap Sachsenring race, eventually crossing the line in eighth place at one of his favourite MotoGP venues – despite the knocks he took in qualifying and warm-up crashes.

Although the result was equal to his second best finish thus far with Ducati, Hayden nonetheless slipped to 13th in the standings as he was leapfrogged by Gresini pair Alex de Angelis and Toni Elías who were fifth and sixth respectively in the race.

Afterwards Hayden told motogp.com, “Things were not as good as we had hoped after such a strong weekend and unfortunately we ended up in eighth place. Turn one was not good to me, I got in hot and then everyone was just there. I probably didn’t do the right thing in certain places and I blew all the hard work from qualifying.”

“I am disappointed in the result for sure, but the weekend as a whole we can take some positives from. I had another crash this morning because I got too excited having seen I could go a lot faster, after being towards the back all year. I apologised to the team for making some mistakes but I don’t apologise for trying so hard.”