Hayden Blames Poor Fitness and Wrong Set-Up for Jerez Failure

Nicky Hayden

Nicky Hayden can't seem to find his pace on the Ducati Desmosedici GP9 this season, as the North American rider is yet to challenge for the top positions after the first 3 races of the MotoGP season. The 2006 series' champion admitted it was the wrong set-up that caused his disappointing 15th place at Jerez last weekend, combined with the poor physical conditions following the Motegi crash a week before.

After being thrown out of the race (in Japan) due to a childish mistake by rookie Yuki Takahashi, Hayden found it hard to get in complete shape for the Spanish Grand Prix. The Kentucky racer suffered two crashes this season, as he was also involved in an accident during the Qatar qualifying earlier this year.

Having scored only 4 points for Ducati this season, Hayden was heading to the Jerez track searching for his big break. Instead, he scored a single point after a constant struggle with his GP9 due to a full fuel load and wrong tire choice.

“I was nervous that physically it would be a tough race but it turned out to be a lot worse than we expected,” said Hayden after his difficult race at Jerez. “In the beginning I struggled a lot again with a full fuel load and I made a mistake on the first lap – I was trying to make some positions up and I actually lost some. I tried to recover but something was wrong with the set-up of the bike.”

“I can’t make the harder compound work well with my bike and I have to go with the softer one but today even those didn’t start to work well until I got a lot of heat into them. I did my best time on the 17th lap so there is something we have definitely to work on with the team. We need to look at the data and think up something different for the next race,” added the Ducati rider, as reported by the MotoGP site.