Repsol Honda rider Nicky Hayden made a steady start to their German GP weekend at the Sachsenring today, completing the first two practice sessions in eighth position.  Nicky Hayden made some useful improvements to his RC212V in today’s second outing and the American believes he can find a good few tenths during tomorrow’s final two sessions.

Nicky Hayden, eighth fastest, 1m 22.975s

“Today was pretty average, really. I certainly hoped to be nearer the top in both sessions. We made some little improvements this afternoon, got the bike to steer a bit better, and dropped the lap time a bit which helped, but we’re still down in eighth. It’s a short little lap here, so a couple of tenths is a lot. We’ve got a couple of ideas to improve tomorrow, but it’s not easy to figure out how we’re going to get down to where we need to be. We need to find a big chunk from somewhere. In the past I’ve had some good results here but it’s a track where I always struggle a bit on the first day and then pull it together, so let’s see if we can’t do the same this year. Lap time-wise we’re already quite a bit quicker than last year which we have been everywhere, in fact I’ve already gone faster than I qualified last year.”