Nicky Hayden trialled a new windscreen on his Ducati Team bike en route to ninth place in practice at Circuit of the Americas on Friday.

The MotoGP™ World Champion of 2006, then riding for Repsol Honda Team, thoroughly enjoyed his first outing at the Texan track onboard MotoGP machinery, but is well aware that Ducati is still some way off the leading pace.

“I do love the track!” he told motogp.com “It’s a really nice facility, really great. This morning was quite difficult in the cold conditions; the tyres were just too hard for that, so that wasn’t too much fun because we didn’t have much grip and it was really hard to get any feel.

“This afternoon we were three seconds faster, mainly just due to the tyres working better, but we’ve got a lot of work to do. We know the gap to the front is big and we expected that, but I do enjoy the track and I’m still looking forward to it.”

The Kentucky rider went on to explain the strong points of his Desmosedici, also describing how he sampled a new windscreen:

“It’s a really smooth surface and there’s some hard braking. Our bike is really stable on the brakes, so hopefully we can at least be in the mix tomorrow. I was using the same fairing I used in Qatar, but a different bubble (windscreen); we also used it a bit in Jerez testing and it does make the change of direction a bit better. It’s not as good in the wind, though, so I’m not sure we’re going to keep it on because the protection for the body is less and it was pretty windy today, so we might go back.”

Italian teammate Andrea Dovizioso ended Friday in seventh position.

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