Honda Racing’s Nicky Hayden popped his Pirelli wets cherry today at the Assen World Superbike round, managing to finish sixth on the combined timesheets despite having no experience.
The former MotoGP World Champion was 1.3s slower than Alex Lowes - himself having a six-tenth advantage over Tom Sykes - and stayed out for the whole of FP1 to get used to the rubber he may have to use in both races.
“It has been a good learning day for me. At some point in the season I would have had to try the bike and the Pirelli tyres in the wet, so it’s all experience for me. It was not easy at the beginning, because if you’re riding slowly in these conditions it takes longer for the tyres to warm up, so then it’s harder to get a good feeling from them,” said Hayden.
“This morning I stayed out for almost the entire session and managed to get comfortable with the bike, while this afternoon we started to work a little bit with the setup. It has been a good day and a fifth place is definitely not a bad result; let’s see how it goes and what weather we encounter tomorrow.”
