Hayden: "It would be nice to be pushing near the front before Qatar"

Hayden: "It would be nice to be pushing near the front before Qatar"

Saturday, 28 March 2009

Despite changeable weather on the first day of testing in Jerez, Nicky Hayden completed some important set-up work on his Desmosedici GP9 machine.

The 2006 MotoGP World Champion continued to make progress in his adaptation to the bike and Bridgestone tyres but will be looking to make the most of his final day of preseason testing, which takes place here tomorrow.

"We were lucky today because it looked like the weather was going to be a disaster," commented Hayden, who was ninth fastest with a lap clocked in 1’40.987. "This morning we decided to go out and do some laps anyway just to check the performance of the wet tyres on a damp track because we won’t have any intermediates this year."

"When it dried out in the afternoon we found that the bike had improved in some areas but there are other things we really need to work on. We’ll speak to Filippo Preziosi this evening, analyse the data and try to do much better tomorrow because it would be nice to be pushing near the front before we go to Qatar."