Nicky Hayden enjoyed a busy race during which he battled long and hard for a sixth-place finish. Hayden made a great start from the fourth row of the grid and spent the race fighting back and forth with a number of rivals including Marco Melandri, Andrea Dovizioso, Colin Edwards and Lorenzo. Down in eighth at one stage, he modified his lines and adjusted his traction control to fight back to take sixth during the final few laps.

Nicky Hayden:

“We knew starting tenth was never going to be easy. I crashed my number one bike in qualifying, then this morning I rode the other bike, so I started the race with the bike I’d crashed but it was fine. I got a really good start and a good first corner too, but I just couldn’t go with the lead group today.

We had a huge tailwind on the back straightaway, so I was running out of gear. It made it so hard to get it stopped for the corner at the end of the straight, so a lot of guys were running wide. Mid-race I had a few problems, felt a few drops of rain, and my corner speed in the long corners wasn’t so good. Towards the end I changed a few little things with my lines and the traction control settings. I started to move forward and at the end I was going pretty good.

There was a lot of good battling going on but it would’ve been better to have been battling for a better position. I didn’t give up, kept pushing and picked off a few guys near the end.”