Hayden worried about race pace

The former champion was outside the top ten throughout practice and looked set for a midfield start until he burst through to sixth place with his final lap of qualifying.

But Hayden is not sure if he will be able to maintain that pace in race trim tomorrow.

"It definitely hasn't been an easy day or an easy weekend," he said. "We haven't really found a direction even though we've been trying a lot of things.

"This afternoon I think we made a bit of progress and got a better feeling as time went on, so I was able to put one down later on and get a respectable grid position. But I really need to come up with something for tomorrow if I don't want to watch those guys completely disappear in the race."

Hayden said the Le Mans weekend had been a constant battle with his Honda's set-up so far.

"Getting into the corners has been the issue, then when we get the front better we hurt the rear, so it's been a constant compromise all weekend," he said.

"We've been making a little bit bigger changes than we would usually make during a race weekend but sometimes that has to be done.

"We'll definitely try another little something in warm-up. We've got a lot of work to do tonight, but these boys aren't scared of a little hard work."