Clearly today’s race for Nicky Hayden and Valentino Rossi didn’t end up like the photo above, because Alvaro Bautista stuck it to the two Ducatisti, taking the seventh spot after an entertaining three-way battle, but the big question will be come at Laguna Seca; which Ducati GP11 will they be using?Will Hayden stick to the GP11 step 2 or try his luck with GP11.
1 at his home race, even if team mate Rossi has now second thoughts on the bike? Ducati will be bringing both versions to the States for both riders to try out and they’ll have to decide which they prefer, even if they know they won’t even be near the factory Honda’s and Yamaha’s.
“I tried to go with that group in front of me off the start, but about the second or third lap I had a pretty big moment over the bumps in Turn 1 and they took off,” said Hayden.
“From there I had a big battle with Bautista and Vale.
It was fun, with a lot of overtaking, but battling for seventh place, 27 seconds back is hard for me to take at a track that I love and where I’ve been on the podium several times.
I got to seventh toward the end and did my best lap, but they came with me.
Bautista got me on my last lap, at the bottom of the hill.
I re-passed him in the last corner, but he squared it up and nipped me to the line.
It’s easy to say now, but I wish I raced the soft tyre.
Thanks to the team and everybody that worked hard, but we had better hopes for today, going into Laguna.
” It wasn’t a bad race for Valentino Rossi after his disastrous 16th place in Saturday’s qualifying session, he actually managed to lap faster in the race than in qualifying and even if crew chief Jeremy Burgess is still at home with his wife Claudine who recently underwent surgery, the team tried a last minute change in weight distribution that helped the Italian with traction, corner entry and braking.
“Today went a little better,” said Rossi.
“This morning in the warm-up we made a change to the setup that helped me to slightly improve the feeling compared to the very, very difficult practice sessions.
After the opening laps, I realized that my pace was the same as that of Nicky and Bautista’s group, maybe even a little faster, but I had small glitches with the gearbox in the second half of the race.
It was mainly hurting me in the last corner, when I changed to third, because the bike wheelied and it took me half the straightaway before I could put it back down.
At the end of the race, I wanted to pass Nicky on the brakes into the first corner, where I was pretty strong, but instead even Bautista passed me on the straight.
Anyway, that’s not where we want to be.
We definitely improved today compared to Saturday, but we’re still too far back.
We find the race setup late, and that makes everything more difficult, but in order to improve we have to try many things, which makes it easy to lose our direction.
It’s understandable, because we don’t know this bike well and I think we have to take chances and try everything.
Now we’ll analyze the data from this weekend and decide what to do for Laguna Seca.
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