DUCATI MARLBORO:

Nicky Hayden will start his home Grand Prix at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway from the second row of the grid after recording his best dry qualifying position of the season so far this afternoon. Sixth place for Hayden, who was second fastest in the dry free practice yesterday, means he will start from the second row although his stand-in team-mate Mika Kallio will be some way behind him in 15th after suffering a crash in the final phases of this afternoon’s single hour-long qualifying session.

NICKY HAYDEN – (Ducati MotoGP Team) (6th; 1’41.067)

“It seems the story is always the same: even though this is my best dry qualifying result and second best grid position of the year I still feel I could have gone faster at the end and I’m not completely happy. I set a good lap chasing Dani (Pedrosa) but I think the tyre went off right at the end because it started to spin up in the last sector and it cost me some time. Anyway, I’m on the second row and we’re competitive so it’s not all bad. I’m using a slightly different set-up here than before Brno – something we found in the test there – and it’s definitely helping me through some of these flip-flop direction changes. I know what I’m in for tomorrow and I’m not expecting to find a full second in the morning. The main thing will be to see about the tyre choice if it is a lot cooler, as a lot of people are expecting. I’m really looking forward to racing in front of my fans, friends and family here at Indy and the plan is to get the best start possible, try to hang on to that front group as long as I can and just give the absolute maximum.”

MIKA KALLIO (Ducati MotoGP Team) (15th; 1’42.250)

“We started the session well and my first outing on used tyres wasn’t too bad. We tried a different set-up in the middle of the session but it wasn’t as good and I switched back. When we put a fresh tyre on to push for a lap time I had to abort a couple of laps because there were riders in my way, then I tried to push again and crashed. It was a really similar crash to the one in qualifying at Brno – I just lost front grip and the next thing I knew I was on the floor. For some reason my feeling with the front is quite vague and it is an area we know we need to work on. Hopefully we can find something before the race tomorrow.”