Marlboro Ducati's Nicky Hayden says he is hoping to exploit his Ducati's GP11 strongest feature - strength and stability under braking - to good effect at this weekend's French MotoGP round at Le Mans in an effort to equal his then best-ever result.

The American bagged fourth place in 2010 but says the stop and go nature of the circuit, which isn't a favourite, should play into his hands as nearly every corner is preceded by a straight.

“Traditionally, Le Mans hasn’t been a good track for me. I’ve never had a podium or a front row there, but I was fourth there last year, which was my best-ever result. You can’t really make too much out of that, but we’ll try to take the information we collected during the test at Estoril and see if we can put it to good use in France," said Hayden.

"The weather at Le Mans can be either way, especially this time of year, which is just part of racing. One good thing I look forward to is that I think the best strength of our bike right now is stability under hard braking, and Le Mans has a lot of hard braking.

"Traditionally, the grip there isn’t very good, so that’s something we’re probably really going to have to work on. We’ll go there and see what we’ve got.”