Ducati's Nicky Hayden plans to work on tyre life at this weekend's Assen MotoGP round after he has started fast in the last two rounds only for his rear hoop to give up the ghost early on, leaving him to slip slowly down the order and be passed, at Silverstone, by a man with a broken leg on the last lap.

Although Hayden is an ex-flat tracker and a master of coping with a loose rear, such is the pace in MotoGP now that any slide mean losing vital tenths to competitors who rarely make mistakes.

"If you look at the result of my last race, I can’t say that it was really positive, but we learned a couple of things. One of those is that we need to try to come up with something to be easier on the tyre, so we don’t destroy it as quickly. We’ll work on that in the Netherlands and try to get a good result," said the 2006 world champion.