Hayden finds direction with modified chassis

Quote :

Having harvested mere eighth and seventh places finishes from the first two rounds of his title defence, MotoGP world champion Nicky Hayden hopes that a modified chassis for his RC212V will help provide the direction needed for a return to the front.

The 25-year-old American began the two-day test at the Spanish GP circuit by being eleventh out of the 19 riders riding in the Monday rain: "A lot of the same issues we're having in the dry we're having in the wet too so the feeling was mixed, but I was able to get faster as the day went on and collected a lot of useful data," he said.

The Repsol Honda rider returned, alongside nine of his rivals - plus Honda test rider Tady Okada and Ducati test rider Vittoriano Guareschi - on Tuesday. Though the track was still wet in the morning, by 1.30pm the surface had dried enough for Hayden to begin evaluating a modified chassis and trying various suspension set-up options in combination with a range of Michelin tyres.

Hayden, who has struggled with front-end feel and poor top speed, chose not to fit sticky qualifying tyres and eventually set the sixth fastest time. Countryman Colin Edwards was fastest on race tyres on Tuesday, one place and 0.145secs in front of Hayden.

"It took a while for the circuit to dry out [on Tuesday] morning but this afternoon I got some useful track time," said Hayden after his 72 laps. "We did some work with a modified chassis and towards the end of the day we found a direction that improved the feel of the package. I'm not going to try to hide the fact that things haven't quite gone to plan in the first two races and we've still got a lot of work to do but we made some progress today. As much as I'd love to go straight to Turkey, I'll use these few weeks off to think about a few things and try to make that step up needed to get back up front. Thanks to team and to HRC because all those guys stayed here and worked really hard - we're all in this together."

Crash

i guess we'll see if this fixes his problems...or not.

nope, he's screwed.

yeah, if he doesn't start doing better with the new chassis, he can't really keep blaming the front end.

he's screwed...probably won't win Laguna eigher.

thats funny, i was just thinking the same thing today. this will be the third year there so all the other riders must be getting at least a little used to it by now. i'd like to see Edwards win there this year.

sure...Edwards is a contender there. Hayden is not.

no, if he can't get his bike figured out, he won't be a contender anywhere.

he's a 'World Champion,' he should be able to figure the bike out...

he should be able to figure it out...but it still eludes him.

complete sentences seem to elude him.

i think he likes to make them more colorful.

the colours of KFC don't count.