Hayden upbeat despite poor qualifying

Hayden was just 0.4 seconds slower than his polesitting Repsol Honda teammate Dani Pedrosa, but in what turned out to be the closest qualifying session in MotoGP history, this was only good enough for 11th.

But despite this latest disappointment in what has already become an extremely fraught title defence, Hayden believes he can still salvage a good result from tomorrow's race.

"We've made some improvements with the bike today and the feeling is pretty good," he said.

"I wasn't totally satisfied with my qualifying laps and of course I'm definitely a little disappointed with my grid position - 0.4 seconds doesn't sound like a long way off but right now in this league at this track it's a lot."

Hayden is slightly concerned about the start of the race and the tight first corner, where Valentino Rossi famously tangled with Toni Elias last year.

"It's frustrating to be this far back especially knowing how tight it could be on the first lap - you've got to be smart in turn one, but you can't go in there tip-toeing either," Hayden acknowledged.

"Nonetheless I'll be trying to get an awesome start and ride hard for 27 laps and try to move forward. I'm due a good start so I'll be banking on that tomorrow."