Ducati riders Nicky Hayden, Valentino Rossi struggle at Gran Premio de Aragon – MotoGP news
Ducati riders Nicky Hayden and Valentino Rossi struggling throughout the Motorland Aragon race weekend held from September 16 – 18, 2011.
Following the tough race day, Hayden finished seventh and Rossi ended with a tenth position in the Gran Premio de Aragon.
The Kentucky Kid, Hayden, took off well from the start line. He steadily rode with the mid pack of riders. Hayden’s frequently exchanged positions with satellite Ducati rider, Hector Barbera. Occasionally Barbera lead Hayden in the race.
Hayden said, “I had a good start and was decent at the very beginning. We knew tyre wear was going to be an issue, and we had a drop in performance after the first couple of laps. It lost grip, and I also wasn’t able to load the bike well for turning.”
Hayden further explained his situation in the race. He said he was riding well through many sections of the track but the last corner cost him to lose time in each lap.
For some time in the race, he got hold of the second pack of the riders including Simoncelli and Lorenzo. On the other side, he also had to defend his position from Barbera, who continuously grabbed his tail.
The Kentucky Kid added that he would have been pleased to fight with Alvaro Bautista but the Spaniard was fast. While riding the GP11.1, he hoped to get good results but the tyre wear was not a help at all.
The Italian rider, Rossi, was penalised for using the seventh engine in the season as teams are only allowed to use six engines throughout the season. This caused Rossi to start the race from pit lane with the ten seconds delay to race start.
Valentino Rossi said, “It was definitely a difficult race, even if objectively speaking, we could have done a little better than we did. We used the setup from yesterday morning, with which I had done some good laps with a very used tyre. Unfortunately,
in the race the rear tyre was sliding much more than it did in practice.”
Rossi added that the team is working on different kinds of front setup on the GP11.1. The modifications have not given any good results yet, but in the long run, it might get beneficial.
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