Hayden pays tribute to Cummings

From motogp.com

Running the number 69 on his Ducati Desmosedici GP9 and the number 22 on his helmet, Nicky Hayden placed 12th in the opening practice session for the Alice TT Assen on Thursday. He now looks to improve transmission troubles in time for MotoGP qualifying.

“We had some different ideas to try here with the electronics and we ran them at the beginning of the session but I didn’t like them, so we went back to something similar to what we had in Barcelona, which enabled us to move up a bit," the American said. "The gap to the front is closer than it’s been at other tracks but unfortunately a second around here is a lot of time and our position is not much of an improvement.

"There are some parts of the track that are pretty good and other sections where I’m kind of in between gears so we obviously need to look at the transmission tonight and put it all together a little better for tomorrow. We’ve got a lot of work to do but we’re used to that!

"I’m running the number 22 on my helmet this weekend for a close friend of our family back in America, Nick Cummings, who got hurt in a dirt-track event recently. His Dad used to sponsor me when I was younger and I just want him and his family to know that we’re with them and thinking about them, hoping things come right.”

Cummings was critically injured in a crash in Dayton, OH.