Hayden hopeful of strong result

The reigning MotoGP world champion, who has already seen Ducati rival Casey Stoner take this year's crown in September, has managed to score only three third places this season.

Even though he could do no better than seventh in any of the free practice sessions this weekend, the Repsol Honda rider managed to qualify in third place today thanks to Michelin's qualifier tyres.

"It really has been quite miserable," said the American. "We've struggled all weekend for whatever reason. We just seemed to not get the tyres to work hard enough. I know we've cried all year, tyres this and that, but this weekend has just not really been much fun.

"Normally I really like this track, but once we put the qualifiers in everything changed and it worked really good."

Hayden is certain the team will work hard in trying to find some solutions for the race.

"Obviously tonight we gotta do something big and just try to roll the dice to see if we can come up with something to get the bike to get some feeling in," said Hayden. "So we've got a lot of work to do tonight but luckily I have some good guys out there and they've got a few ideas.

"In those twenty minutes we have to try something, but the warm-up is quite early in the morning, and some of the mornings are quite cool, so you don't wanna lead yourself as the track could be quite different at 9:40am than it could be at 2pm."

With this being the last race where Hayden can display the number 1 on his bike, the Kentucky man is resolute in trying to part with it after a strong performance.

"We'll see how the results go, hopefully it won't be too sad," he said. "But we knew that was coming for a while, but nonetheless it is the last race as world champ so we'll try to go out in style.

"It's been a big step to get into the front row. If we can get the bike working a little bit better and I can step my game up tomorrow, we'll see what happens. The race is always a different story, anything can happen, a lot of guys here are going to be going for it, and it's quite a tight track.

"Right now I don't feel so confident, but 30 laps round here is a long time, and with 30 laps left in the season I need to try to do something."