“We made some slight improvements”Nicky Hayden was back in the saddle at Istanbul Park yesterday, staying behind after Sunday's race for an important day of testing onboard the Honda RC212V.
‘The Kentucky Kid' stressed the importance of post-race testing after Jerez,
and practiced what he preached once again at the Turkish track.
The reigning MotoGP World Champion had worked with a lot of new parts over the weekend, and concentrated his Monday work on chassis setup and the Michelin tyres which were unable to break into the top six in the Grand Prix of Turkey.
‘Trick Daddy' undertook 106 laps of the circuit- only four laps under five full race distances. On race tyres he took half a second off his fastest lap in the Grand Prix which, although he acknowledged was a little late in coming, bodes positively for the next race in two weeks time.
“Today my best lap came with a race tyre and 1m 53.8 is a lot faster than I went over the weekend so that's a good sign”, concluded Hayden. “That's basically as fast as I went on Saturday with qualifying tyres. I know it doesn't count for too much on Monday, but I think we made some slight improvements.
We definitely collected some useful information, though it's not like we knocked a wall down or anything. One thing we really worked on was trying to make the front tyres last a little bit longer because I've been hard on front tyres this weekend and I think we achieved that.”
DORNA / CAPSIS International
