Hayden excited ahead of Phillip Island

Eurosport - Tue, 30 Sep 16:11:00 2008

Nicky Hayden has said he is excited at the prospect of racing at Phillip Island after hitting form in the latter stages of the MotoGP season.

2008 Indianapolis GP Honda Hayden - 0

Repsol Honda rider Hayden, 27, is looking forward to the Australian Grand Prix following his podium in Indianapolis and top-five finish in Japan atop the improving pneumatic Honda.

"I love Phillip Island," he said. "I don't think there's a better racetrack in the world, but I wish we could race there when the weather's a little bit better - sometimes it can be more like Phillip Iceland than Phillip Island.

"A lot of tracks they keep slowing down, adding chicanes for safety, but at this one you can really turn it on.

"There's some real fast stuff, so it's a track where you can get in a rhythm when the bike's working and go fast, and when the bike's not working you can be pretty slow.

"You spend a lot of time on the edge of the tyres, so it's probably the hardest track in the world for tyres, so we'll work with my Michelin guys to get the best tyres for the race."

Hayden will race in Ducati colours next year and the American, up to eighth in the standings, is now just three points behind sixth-placed Colin Edwards of Yamaha Tech 3.

He added that he wants his maiden win at the track.

"I've had some good results there: a couple of pole positions, a second and a third, but I've never won one there," he said.

"You need a bike set-up that saves the tyres, plus you need to be able to steer through the long corners and change direction too.

"It's easy to lower the rear and soften things up to get traction, but then you lose the steering."

Crash.Net / Eurosport

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  1. Hayden, Rossi and Capirossi all have good past results on this track. Melandri too, and he finally seems to get a bit more used to his bike. The long sweeping corners on this track suits Hayden, but the Honda hairpin is where he might get cought out. I've been a huge fan of Hayden for years, but he seems to have a problem building up speed out of hairpin bends. We saw that in the Honda corner last time. The same happened last week-end in Japan. On the first few laps when he was still with the leading group he lost half a second going through the last hairpin before the back straight (where Lorenzo touched Pedroa's back wheel on the last lap). Same in the Melbourne loop in Donington. What's the deal? Is it him? Or is his bike tuned for a smaller, lighter rider? A hobbit? Or Pedrosa?

    From lawler_ciara, on Wed 1 Oct 9:04AM

  2. lol u wish hayden rossi will win

    From seanbay3535@..., on Tue 30 Sep 7:25PM
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