Hayden upbeat about new Honda

Nicky Hayden

After a strenuous season and a day and a half of testing the new RC212V at Valencia 2006 World Champion Nicky Hayden headed directly to the prestigious EICMA Motor Show in Milan on Thursday.

The Repsol Honda rider was in a positive frame of mind when it came to reviewing this week’s work with the 2008 prototype, stating: “We’ve improved every component of the bike and in fact I was second fastest in Valencia behind (Casey) Stoner. So hopefully things go better than this year."

However, the Kentucky Kid was candid in his reflections on what has been a long hard campaign in 2007, commenting: “This season wasn’t one of my best and the tyres didn’t help. The frame and the engine always needed fine-tuning during the season and so I was rarely able to ride like a real World Champion. I definitely didn’t like my results this year."

Nonetheless Hayden remains in a positive frame of mind and he had a good word to say about the EICMA show, which was also visited by his successor as MotoGP World Champion, Casey Stoner of Ducati Marlboro, earlier this week.

“This show is incredible. It’s huge and fascinating. The Italian public is always supportive and never gave up cheering for me this year. Of course they asked me for a lot of autographs. They also asked me about Stoner, (Valentino) Rossi and (Dani) Pedrosa," concluded the American.