Hayden was hoping to continue his late season resurgence by at least matching his third from two weeks ago in Phillip Island. But he was never on the pace and didn’t have big expectations for the race; 21 laps held in 104 degree heat.
“I spent most of the weekend seventh, eighth and wasn’t really where we needed to be and in the race I went faster than in the morning warm-up,” he said. “We tried some stuff this morning and it didn’t work and it was never really a big threat and the weather didn’t help us on Friday and Saturday with missing some time, we never got to where we needed to be.”
Hayden had a number of battles, but the longest was with JiR Team Scot MotoGP’s Andrea Dovizioso, the rider who will replace him on the Repsol Honda team next year.
Hayden chased Dovi for much of the race, passing him a few times, but never leading him across the stripe. And when it came down to the final lap, Dovi held firm to take his first MotoGP podium.
“I enjoyed the battle,” Hayden said. “It was a fun race. The leaders,” Valentino Rossi and Dani Pedrosa, “had a big gap on us, but it was a fun battle with Dovi and I had heat all over him. My board was plus zero, 0.2 , not a lot of room there and it would have been nice to get on the podium.”
Hayden remembered a few passes, but wasn’t sure where Dovi got him for the last time.
“I went into one and then two and around three I was off line a little bit and had to roll off the throttle a little to get it to turn and he got back under me,” Hayden said of the 18th lap sequence. “He’s a good dude to race with. He races clean but he races hard. He’s certainly a fighter and the last lap he did his best split in T4. You couldn’t say I gave him his first podium, he earned it, he rode hard.”
The conditions were described by some riders as the most taxing they’d ever endured. Hayden looked fresh an hour after the race, though he said he wouldn’t have wanted it to be much longer.
“Not too bad although I’m not saying it was an easy race or I could have done another 20 laps,” he said. “You had to dig in and it was hard, but I was prepared for it. I know what 45 minutes around here in the heat does, so I was prepared for it. My last couple laps I did 2.02.8s, as fast as I went all race, I lit it up in a couple parts of the track.”
