Nicky Hayden aiming for continued progress

The Ducati Team rider has discussed the improvement on the Desmosedici GP10 this season and says there is still untapped potential in the factory machine, and he also outlined the importance of the test that follows the next round at Brno.

Halfway through his second season with the Ducati Team, Nicky Hayden has assessed how the 2010 campaign and bike have felt to date and the American is pleased with the progress being made.

“We took a big step from last year to this year, and I would hope to be able to do the same next year,” said Hayden, who has 89 points after nine races of the current campaign, more than he had after 15 rounds last year. “The bike has improved a lot from last year, and the engineers there are really committed to wanting to make it the best bike on the grid. I’ve seen a lot of improvements from last year in terms of rideability, reliability, and it’s a more consistent bike. I think the bike has a lot of potential that we haven’t even got to yet.”

Outlining some aspects that do need improving on the GP10, Hayden continued: “We’ve been having big problems with our starts lately, both Casey and I, but we can work that out. I know Casey, he’s a good rider, so I’m sure if he thinks the bike needs to improve, I hope we can improve it. But I think we have a good enough package to be winning races. Casey proved that in Qatar, if he didn’t crash there, he would have won that race quite easily. But having said that, we still want to improve. We’ve seen a lot of the other teams making steps, especially Honda, who seem to have made a big one since the start of the season. So we need to do the same.”

Hayden is optimistic that the test that follows the next round at Brno can be as productive as last year’s proved to be.

“That test is important, as limited as testing time is now in MotoGP you really have to take advantage of any extra time. The motors we get to test with don’t come out of our allocation,” he explained. “So you hope for good weather and hope to make a breakthrough.”

“Last year at that test on the Monday we changed something with the geometry and were able to take a little step from there, and my results basically improved from that test on. It was something we found in the last 30 minutes of the test. It had rained in the afternoon, and we had waited and waited, and the track finally dried. Everybody went out and was able to get some stuff in, so that’s important.”

Source: http://www.motogp.com/en/news/