Ducati's Nicky Hayden was subjected to a fairground ride in yesterday's Estoril MotoGP race after the electronics on his Desmosedici GP12 developed a fault and were giving the wrong data to other components.

The bike's ECU was confused as to where it was on the track, so was delivering power when it shouldn't have been, knocking the anti-wheelie off when it needed to be on and generally making life very unpleasant for the 2006 world champion.

"It was a pretty miserable race. Right from the start, something interfered with the ECU and the bike didn't know where it was on the track. I was getting laptimes on the back straight and when I was in turn one the bike though I was in turn nine. So with amount of electronics we have now, it was impossible to ride," said Hayden, speaking to bikesportnews.com at Estoril.

"At the start, I came out of turn four, opened the throttle and nothing happened. Then on the front straight on the first lap in sixth gear I felt like it wasn't running. Then I got the laptime halfway round I knew what was wrong. Some straights I had no power then in turn three, four, nothing. At those corners, it thought I was in the chicane.

"This weekend, I was using a lot of engine braking for the downhill corners, but I had none so I was running wide. The place where I needed wheelie control, I didn't have it. Not enjoyable at all. It wasn't easy and quite dangerous."