Hayden 14th & Aoyama 16th for Team Drive M7 Aspar in MotoGP COTA Qualifying

12/04/14. 02 GP AMERICAS - AUSTIN - QP

HAYDEN TO START FROM FOURTEENTH ON GRID AT HOME RACE DRIVE M7 Aspar rider improves by a second in qualifying, Aoyama also improves to line up in sixteenth After a wide open start to the new MotoGP World Championship in Qatar in round one, the second round of the season has been all about Marc Márquez after a dominant weekend so far from the Spaniard, who set the pace in each free practice session before claiming pole position by a comfortable margin in qualifying. Pedrosa and Bradl at least managed to close the gap to the World Champion this afternoon, making up an all-Honda front row in tomorrow's Grand Prix of the Americas.  After struggling to break through the 2'06 barrier throughout free practice DRIVE M7 Aspar rider Nicky Hayden found a full second in qualifying mode to set three laps in the 2'05s, the last of which proving to be his best of the weekend and enough to secure fourteenth place on the grid. The American has struggled more than he expected at his home circuit but after making solid progress this afternoon he is hoping to find more pace in tomorrow's warm-up ahead of the race. On the other side of the DRIVE M7 Aspar garage Hiroshi Aoyama continued to work on finding an improved front-end set-up for his machine, the Japanese rider qualifying two places behind his team-mate in sixteenth. 14th Nicky Hayden 2.05.062: “I honestly thought the flowing sections of this track would be easier than they have been today. I struggled through there last year and I thought it would be much more easy on the Honda but that hasn't really been the case and we have also had some electronic issues that have cost us valuable time. It is a shame that our home GP isn't going to plan at the moment but looking on the bright side we improved by a full second in qualifying and we have to keep working hard in the warm-up tomorrow to try and find a bit more. Hopefully we can do that and give the fans here a better show in the race.” 16th Hiroshi Aoyama 2.05.788: “Today we continued to work on the front end of the bike and we have found a pretty positive feeling. I feel more comfortable on the bike and the lap times are getting quicker. The only mistake we made was perhaps going a bit too far with the changes to the set-up because when they didn't work we didn't have time to go back. I'm not worried because we have a solid base to work from tomorrow and we know that will be very useful for the race. Tomorrow is the most important day of the weekend, we just have to stay focused on the job at hand and give it our best.”