Nicky Hayden continues to develope RC212V

Nicky Hayden had a productive day as he continued to develop the RC212V at the final test of the year before the MotoGP winter testing ban comes into effect on December 1. The 2006 World Champion chose not to run on qualifying rubber today as he and his crew analysed the effects of various changes to chassis set-up.

Nicky Hayden’s quickest lap of 1′40.692s on race tyres was an improvement of 0.3s over yesterday and the 26-year-old American was only 0.04s behind Pedrosa’s best on race rubber. The test continues for one final day tomorrow before the 2007 MotoGP programme finally grinds to a close.

Nicky Hayden

“I think we picked up where we left off yesterday and the test went quite well again. We didn’t work any miracles out there but we chipped away at the times and made some improvements. I wasn’t a lot faster today but I was able to take a little bit off the lap time and was certainly more consistent in my pace than before.

I think everyone in front of me today used qualifying tyres and as far as the team knew nobody went faster than 1′40.6s on race tyres, which is pretty encouraging because yesterday I was definitely off by a couple of tenths on race tyres. Today we were right in there, the team’s done a good job and we had quite a good day.

We were trying some quite big changes with the chassis set-up today which is what you have to do to learn how the bike reacts and behaves in different conditions. Overall we collected a lot of useful information and hopefully we can keep the progress going tomorrow.”