Nicky Hayden today stormed to his second front-row start in as many weekends, the Repsol Honda rider showing dazzling speed aboard his RC212V around the hugely challenging Phillip Island racetrack.
Hayden was in the fight for pole position throughout this afternoon’s qualifying session, run in cool, breezy conditions. He twice set the pace before ending up third quickest, just 0.091 seconds off the fastest time, and was one of four men to break his own 1m 29.020s outright track record, which he established in 2006, the last year of the 990s. And yet the American was somewhat disappointed to have missed out on pole at one of his favourite tracks, having been fastest in this morning’s final free practice session and in yesterday afternoon’s soaking-wet session. For tomorrow Hayden plans some further fine tuning of machine settings, working to find more traction round a racetrack which involves a lot of speed and a lot of throttle.
Nicky Hayden, 3rd fastest, 1m 28.756s
“The front row is always really important and I’m happy to there, but to be honest I’m a bit disappointed. I’ve had a couple of poles here before, and today another one certainly wasn’t out of the question, there was less than a tenth in it. I would really liked to have been on pole, the season’s on its way out, so it would be nice to have salvaged one of them. But we have been competitive all weekend, fastest this morning and in the rain yesterday, so we’re not too far away. I know the race isn’t going to be easy, we need to sweeten up the bike to see if we can get some more traction, also the rider’s going to have to get it together a little better. The team is doing a great job here, everyone at Repsol Honda is working hard and the Michelin tyres seem to be good. I’ll try to get in there tomorrow and not let these guys get away from me.”
Kazuhiko Yamano - Team Manager
“Nicky did a very good job today, so he will be able to start from the front row tomorrow. His motivation is very high at the moment and this will give him an extra boost for the race. His race pace is quite good and he really likes this racetrack, so we hope he can have a great race and fight for the win.”
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