The results aren't what the 2 Ducati Team riders had desired for, but the process carried out over the weekend helped them to gather important info.
After Saturday’s very hard qualifying session, Rossi and his squad found a setting for the GP11.1 that enabled him to improve his pace by approximately 5 tenths. Hayden succeeded the duel with his teammate for 8th place, although he had desired to be tighter to the front after a good displaying in practice.
Nicky Hayden:
“I tried to go with that group in front of me off the begin, but about the 2nd or 3rd lap I had a pretty big moment over the bumps in Turn 1 and they took off. From there I had a big fight with Bautista and Vale. It was fun, with a lot of overtaking, but combating for 7th place, 27 seconds back is difficult for me to take at a track that I love and where I have been on the podium several times. I got to 7th 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 is easy to tell now, but I wish I raced the soft tyre. Thanks to the team and everyone that worked hard, but we had better desires for today, going into Laguna.”
Valentino Rossi:
“Today went a little better. This morning in the warm-up we made a modify to the setup that helped me to slightly improve the feeling compared to the very, very hard 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 2nd half of the race. It was mainly suffering me in the last corner, when I switched to 3rd, 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 solid, but instead even Bautista passed me on the straight. Anyway, that is not where we want to be. We definitely improved today compared to Saturday, but we are 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 is understandable, because we do not know this bike well and I think we have to take chances and try everything. Now we will examine the information from this weekend and decide what to do for Laguna Seca.”
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Hayden and Rossi 8th and 9th in Germany.
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