Also for Le Mans, we have a bit of new electronic management and team structure that I think should help me and all the Ducati riders. I believe that with Cristhian more freed up from some of the normal work as crew chief he can use his expertise more and focus on really working on the issues I am having with the bike and help give us a better direction and give more info to the factory. So to fill his spot we will bring in Juan (Martnez), who has put up some solid results in MotoGP. He has already worked in Ducati and speaks good English and Italian so he was a good match.

I can’t say I don’t have enough good manpower behind me and it has been encouraging to see Ducati trying everything and working so hard to help get me in a situation to deliver. The team is very important in our sport but it is really up to the rider to do his part and make the difference, so I hope I can step up and do my part soon!”

The Repsol Honda Team will test here tomorrow, focusing on chassis settings and tyre testing with Michelin. Hayden will then travel back to the US where next weekend he will ride a demo lap aboard a 2007 RC212V before the start of the huge Indy 500 car race to promote September’s inaugural Indianapolis MotoGP event.

Nicky Hayden

“That wasn’t too pretty. All weekend we’ve been missing something, the pace hasn’t been there. I got a good start and recovered a couple of positions but couldn’t go with the group I needed to go with. I was hanging in there, then I ran off the track in turn six, got in just a little bit hot, didn’t make it and that lost me three positions. I came back on, had a little dice with Loris over the last few laps but it wasn’t the result we wanted.

It was definitely tough conditions, it wasn’t just a few drops of rain it was straight-up raining through some parts of the track. With the tyres being that hot the lap times didn’t suffer too bad, but I was kinda hoping the rain would come down and let us swap bikes and try something different, but it didn’t happen. This has never been an easy track for me, I’d say Le Mans is the worst track for me on the calendar. Tomorrow we’ll work on chassis stuff. I need to try getting some momentum going, especially for the tracks I really love that are coming up. I need to be strong when I get to them, I need to use the people around me to find what I need.”

DNF

James Toseland GBR Tech 3 Yamaha
John Hopkins USA Kawasaki Racing

As ever, the MotoGP pack is tightly packed with Hayden just six tenths off pole and the fastest 12 riders covered by just 1.076 seconds. Hard-working Hayden and his crew have focused on improving corner-entry performance at this tight and complex track. The American moved up to sixth fastest in qualifying but his crew will make further changes overnight in an effort to improve his pace in race trim.

Weather conditions at Le Mans have been very changeable so far this weekend, with this morning’s third practice session getting underway on a damp track and this afternoon’s qualifying outing run in cool and mostly overcast conditions with the occasional sunny spell. There is still a possibility of rain tomorrow.

Nicky Hayden, 6th fastest, 1m 33.286s

“It definitely hasn’t been an easy day or an easy weekend. We haven’t really found a direction even though we’ve been trying a lot of things. This afternoon I think we made a bit of progress and got a better feeling as time went on, so I was able to put one down later on and get a respectable grid position. But I really need to come up with something for tomorrow if I don’t want to watch them guys completely disappear in the race. It’s going to be hard. Getting into the corners has been the issue, then when we get the front better we hurt the rear, so it’s been a constant compromise all weekend. We’ve been making a little bit bigger changes than we would usually make during a race weekend but sometimes that has to be done. We’ll definitely try another little something in warm-up. We’ve got a lot of work to do tonight, but these boys aren’t scared of a little hard work.”

Kazuhiko Yamano – Team Manager

“That was a fantastic session. Dani’s pole lap was amazingly quick and it was great to see Nicky make it onto the second row. I think we’ve seen some excellent teamwork here, so my thanks to everyone, including Michelin who have done a great job for us. Dani has a good race pace, which is particularly impressive because track conditions have changed constantly over the past two days. Nicky has also done really well, coming better step by step since yesterday morning. He has made many chassis changes and I hope he can make some further improvements for tomorrow.”

Nicky Hayden:

“Things didn’t go as smooth as we’d have liked today. Braking at this track is so important and I don’t have a good feeling when I’m braking. Straight line or leaned over, the front end doesn’t feel so good. I don’t know why, but I was hurting a little bit in that area in China too.

We’re basically a full second off the pace and that’s a lot on a 1 minute 34 lap, so we need to sort something overnight. We really never found a direction all day, we were chasing our tails, so that makes it hard, and it’s never good to fall behind when there’s rain in the forecast. I know the team will work hard, so I’m confident in that.”