Hayden shrugs off Pedrosa's criticism

Pedrosa's comments came after he injured his hand in a crash at Sepang which meant he was unable to ride for a few weeks.

"When he has had this responsibility before he didn't do much good, but at the moment I can't do anything other than try to heal quickly in order to make up for the lost time," Pedrosa was quoted as saying by Motosprint at the time.

Hayden, MotoGP world champion in 2006, said he was unfazed by Pedrosa's remarks.

"I know that Dani talks badly about me, but I don't care," Hayden told the Italian magazine. "I'm not worried about what he may say or think about me. I do my job and the team have faith in me, even though Dani says otherwise.

"I read that somewhere and I laughed. I think people should look most of all at what they do, at their problems, and not always looking at and passing judgement on others.

"What happens is normal, because the world of motorbikes is full of hypocrisy. That's why I behave differently: here, in this environment, I only talk about racing, and that's it."

Shinichi Kokubu, project leader of the RC212V at HRC, added that Pedrosa was wrong about Hayden.

"Pedrosa is wrong when he says that Nicky doesn't know how to develop a bike," he said.

"In fact, Nicky's comments are the the same as Dani's. The problem is that they have completely different riding styles, so each of them wants a different thing. But on the basic indications they are very similar."

Kokubu also denied Pedrosa's crash at Sepang had been caused by a problem with the bike, as suggested by the Spaniard.

"Pedrosa is wrong in this case too, because his crash was not caused by a technical problem. At that moment we had the new chassis and new tyres, the bike wasn't yet set-up in a way suitable to make certain checks, so it was not ready to be pushed hard."