Yes this is bleeding long but as the whole article is even longer, from this week's Friday round up over at Road Racer X:
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE <div class='quotemain'>Obviously, the one most people were holding their breath on was Nicky’s debut with the Ducati Desmosedici, not the least of whom was Nicky himself. Starline Designs had even prepared the American a special “Chapter 2” logo for the event (though, as the author of the authorized Hayden biography, I should point out that this would technically be Chapter 14). Anyway, I asked Nicky this morning what it felt like to go out on that first lap, and he laughed before explaining: “I’ve ridden a lot of different motorcycles I my life—dirt bikes, scooters, Harley Sportsters, speedway bikes, trials bikes, pretty much everything—but when I rode out of the pits on that Duck, it was pretty special. I felt pretty proud to have that opportunity, and I feel a lot of pride to get to ride for that team and factory. It’s quite a strange bike. Just riding out of pit row, the way it reacts to the pit lane speedometer is a little bit different.”
Nicky explained that the Desmosedici uses a completely different clutch system, and that when you have to push hard to even get it and the electronics to kick in. “You have to let the clutch do a lot more work,” he said. “If you try to use it halfway, it doesn’t work.”
As for the test, Nicky said, “I enjoyed it, I really did. The bike has a lot of potential. I know it’s not an easy bike to ride, and there’s a lot of stuff to get used to, but it was a fun experience.”
…he was careful to thank Honda for a nearly decade-long partnership.
Nicky’s right. In addition to the bike itself, there’s a new tire brand (Bridgestone instead of Michelin), new suspension (Ohlins instead of Showa), new electronics (Magnetti Marelli instead of Honda’s in-house system), and even the Brembo brakes are different than those on the Honda. It would probably be easier to switch to a different Japanese brand, for example, but #69 obviously recognizes the promise that the D16 holds if he can both adapt its setup to him and adapt his style to it. He ended up twelfth-fastest on day one and was quickest of the seven riders who went out on the wet second day. His 1’33.960” dry best was about one and a half seconds off the benchmark set by his teammate Casey Stoner, and Hayden figures that his ideal time—what he’d have posted had he managed to do every section right in the same lap—would have been about a 1’33.4”.
Better consistency will probably come with more time on the bike, although Nicky did admit to feeling he hit a sort of plateau toward the end of Monday. As for his Tuesday feat, it was something that had initially seemed out of reach.
“My first run in the wet was terrible!” he admitted. “My out-lap was so slow, I think I lost all the heat in the tire! By the time I got ready to push, I basically had an ice-cold tire and thought I might tip over I was going so slow. We came in and made a few changes and stuff, and I actually got some pretty valuable time in the wet. The bike was a lot different in the rain. Even though I only got twenty laps, it was twenty valuable laps.” Part of the reason so few riders did much time in the wet was that they only had one set of rain tires each.
Nicky and all of the riders could have done with some more dry time, because this off-season’s test schedule is cut almost in half, with most of the outings being just two-day affairs. The number of tires available for testing is also limited, which means Nicky may not always be able to put in his marathon testing days.
Of course Nicky is also switching from a Japanese team to an Italian squad, and he noticed a difference. “Their approach is different, and just the way the team is structured, which I knew going in. At Honda, there was the crew chief and then a suspension guy, a data guy, and so on, whereas now there’s a chief mechanic and a crew chief that sort of work together. Honestly, I didn’t get a complete understanding, because they also had engineers from the company there for the new bike—as did the other teams—so there were a lot of people and I’ve still got some names to learn.”
I though the plateau thing was very interesting.
I guess we will see, Nicky is a bit screwed with the reduced test schedule and new tires but I am sure he will put all the effort in he can. After all, he had to ride a 2007 Honda
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