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Misano WSBK: Hayden 'not happy' with his pace

Despite topping the second World Superbike free practice session, and both sessions overall at Misano Nicky Hayden found plenty to work on ahead of racing this weekend.

The Honda rider posted a magnificent lap late in the second session to take top spot off Althea BMW’s Markus Reiterberger, but the American says more is needed.

“To be honest, I’m not happy with my session at all,” said Hayden. “We had a lot of little problems with the electronics, was showing me the wrong lap-times and the wrong split times. 

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“It wasn’t as consistent as I would have liked to have been but in the end, I’m fastest but we really have to improve the pace for tomorrow.”

Hayden said using the new Pirelli tyres, first utilized by the former MotoGP champion last time out at Donington, helped his cause by giving him more grip and consistency, something evident is his fastest lap at Misano.

Last week’s test was also a factor in the Honda rider’s strong performance, as he believes a current World Superbike weekend is a strong test of adaptability such little time do the riders have before they’re effectively ‘racing’ in Superpole.  

“Oh, for sure the test helped us,” he said. “You know, just start you see that the top ten is within half a second today, it changed quick but when times are really close like that you see it.

“Having a test doesn’t make two seconds difference but you start out a little bit quicker and it helps us and also we were able to, it was the first time we had the chance to try a couple of things on the bike since the season started. 

“It was quite useful, because during the weekends in Superbike, you get Friday and the ‘boom’ Saturday morning you have to – so you don’t really end with one bike. 

“You don’t really have a lot of time to try some stuff, big stuff and we were able to do that little bit at the test so I am very grateful from the team to make the effort to get here from Donington, which was not easy, and it was useful.”

Fastest lap on the Friday pleased Hayden but he was quick to quell too much expectation as he looks forward to the racing.

Well yeah, I’d have been a lot happier if I had seven or eight of those but you know, to do that lap-time was really – I really pushed a lot to do that lap-time,” he said. “At the moment I’m not happy with my pace, so we’ll see.”

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