Red Bull Honda’s Nicky Hayden raced with a broken frame on Saturday at the Assen WorldSBK round.

The former MotoGP star had made good progress through the pack after a turn-one incident not of his doing but then slowly slipped back as he couldn’t maintain the pace. Sunday’s race, after the fault had been diagnosed, saw the Kentucky rider finish in ninth.

“I’m much happier with that race, Saturday was a disaster but we found out why. The frame had a break in it on one of the hangers which made it impossible to be really fast. I had to barely finish. I was much happier in the warm up, the team made a couple of changes overnight, calmed it down a bit,” said Hayden, speaking at the track.

“I made a good start and in the first couple of laps, I was able to pick up a couple of positions and was close to the battle for top five. I enjoyed the race not being 20 seconds back but at least the bike was working good, I was able to fight with some guys.

“It has not been an easy weekend, we lost pretty much all of FP2 with a problem but the team really focused and gave me a much better bike. We changed some stuff with the suspension to we have less wheelie, and give some more torque and more power. We would like to be taking bigger steps but it is tough at this level.”