Xerox Ducati's Noriyuki Haga has said that major tyre problems were the cause of his woes in the first World Superbike race at Portimao today and he crashed while not pushing particularly hard, handing the 2009 title to Ben Spies.

Haga had not been happy with his front-end setup all weekend and qualified in tenth place on Saturday. In the first outing, the Japanese rider used hard tyres front and rear which provided little grip and he went down on the brakes.

“All weekend I have had problems with the set up of the bike, mainly with the tyres that didn’t give me total confidence. Usually we have a package that works well at every track and here too we didn’t change so much with regard to the setting, only really tyres," said Haga.

"In race one we mounted two hard tyres and they didn’t perform as we’d hoped, they didn’t give me the necessary grip so it was hard to brake and unfortunately I fell even though I wasn’t pushing so hard. We changed bikes for race two, just to be sure, as well as changing tyres of course.

This time I had more grip and was able to make a good race. Unfortunately second in the race was not enough to take the title and it’s a real pity, but I must say that I have had a great first year with this fantastic team that always provides me with a good bike.

I thank my whole technical team, Ducati, the sponsors and the Clinica Mobile who have taken good care of me throughout the season. My compliments go to Ben who has been such a strong rival this year and even though he is going to MotoGP next year, I am sure we will remain friends.

This week we’ll start testing in preparation for next year. This year was a new adventure with Ducati and we’ll continue to give 100% in 2010."
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