Hayden upbeat after best qualifying result of ‘09

Saturday, 4 July 2009

Ducati’s Nicky Hayden is ready to give it his best shot in Sunday’s race in front of his supporters, having qualified in eighth place at Laguna.

Hoping to repeat some of his past glories and kickstart his 2009 season on home territory this weekend Nicky Hayden took some steps forward despite an FP2 crash on Saturday in California and hopes to be competitive in the Red Bull U.S. Grand Prix race.

The ‘Kentucky Kid’ has qualified in his best grid slot to date with Ducati ahead of his American race debut for the Italian firm and he summarised Saturday’s action by saying, “In the morning we made a good step, we changed some of the electronics and I was coming off the corners better and immediately able to drop a second on my times, just from hitting the right buttons on the computer, so my data guy did a good job. Then I had a crash and it set us back a bit.”

“In qualifying it wasn’t easy, but we got on the third row which is not great but is by far my best qualifying this year. I was hoping to hold onto the second row start when I did my best time and I thought I might have a chance. It’s still the best this year and normally in qualifying recently I’ve been going backwards or down at the end of the sessions, but this time I managed to stay up and move up a few places.”

Referring to the big crashes suffered by his team-mate Casey Stoner and poleman Jorge Lorenzo, Hayden added, “Qualifying was wild today, I haven’t see a dry session in a long time in the MotoGP class like that, so I really hope everybody is ok. The race will be tough but I have certainly helped by qualifying in a decent way and we’ll just have to see.”