Hayden struggles with fitness and set-up

From motogp.com

The Gran Premio bwin.com de España was another weekend to forget for Nicky Hayden, who appears to be out of luck in MotoGP at the moment.

The American star struggled all weekend to find a good set-up for his Desmosedici GP9, as he attempted to bounce back from his heartbreaking first lap crash at Motegi caused by Yuki Takahashi one week earlier.

The Kentucky native was hindered by his physical condition after that heavy crash in Japan and his high speed accident at Qatar in qualifying on the first weekend of the season.

Hayden could only manage a 15th place finish, the solitary point he earned leaving him 17th in the standings, three rounds into his factory Ducati career.

He admitted, “I was nervous that physically it would be a tough race but it turned out to be a lot worse than we expected. In the beginning I struggled a lot again with a full fuel load and I made a mistake on the first lap – I was trying to make some positions up and I actually lost some. I tried to recover but something was wrong with the set-up of the bike.”

On his difficulty thus far to adapt to Bridgestone tires Hayden added, “I can’t make the harder compound work well with my bike and I have to go with the softer one but today even those didn’t start to work well until I got a lot of heat into them. I did my best time on the 17th lap so there is something we have definitely to work on with the team. We need to look at the data and think up something different for the next race.”

Livio Suppo, Ducati’s MotoGP Project Director, had some reassuring words for the American rider, stating, “It has been a really difficult Grand Prix for Nicky on the back of two tough weekends and two crashes. We have a little break now during which time we can sit down and work out how to get him back to the level he was at in the winter tests, which would lift him much higher up the order.”