"… that number one plate on the bike."

On 10 March, Nicky Hayden will line up at the start in Qatar, his first outing as MotoGP World Champion – and his sights are set on a clear target: to defend his title successfully. In part one of our interview, the “Kentucky Kid” talks about his life as World Champion, his operated shoulder – and reveals how he’s getting on with his new bike.

How has your life changed since becoming MotoGP World Champion?

Well, I still wake up most days and get a great feeling when I remember I’ve got that number one plate on the bike. But actually life hasn’t changed too much and I’m glad about that.

In what ways do the media or people in the street behave differently towards you?

MotoGP isn’t so big in the States so it’s not like I’ve turned into some rock star overnight, which is fine with me. Plus my family keep my feet on the ground, especially my big sister – they won’t let my head get too big. I think it’ll be different when I get back to Europe though, because the sport is pretty huge over there and I got quite a lot of attention from the media and the fans towards the end of the last season.

How does a MotoGP World Champion spend the closed season? For which hobbies, people or activities that you couldn’t focus on during the year have you taken time out?

Actually I didn’t have a lot of time off at all because we were straight back into testing once the season ended, and there was quite a lot of publicity and media stuff to do at home and in Europe. I did get to spend some good time with my family and friends over Christmas, then I went to California in January with my brothers to continue training. It’s not been like one big holiday – that’s for sure!

You underwent a shoulder operation at the end of the season. Are you still restricted by the injury, or has it now healed completely?

It’s getting stronger and I’ve just finished a couple of three-day tests that went pretty well. At the first test I didn’t do as many laps as I usually would because the doc said to take it a little bit easy. Shoulders can take a while to heal and I’m not fully up to strength yet – the movement’s restricted a bit and it gets fatigued a little quicker at the moment. It doesn’t affect my laptimes, it’s just a case of endurance. Still, I did over a hundred laps on the last day of testing in Australia and it stood up ok. It should be fine by the start of the season.

The cubic capacity of the MotoGP bikes has been reduced to 800cc for 2007. How will this affect the behaviour of the motorbikes on track?

The power delivery feels a lot smoother and when you first open the throttle you don’t need to get the bike picked up as much as you did with the 990. The new bike feels lighter too, but actually the weight is not much different. It doesn’t look like the laptimes will be any slower, and we’ll probably go quicker at quite a few of the tracks. Corner speeds are going up and because the bikes have less power you’re carrying more speed into the corner and not squaring the corner off as much as before.

Do the new bikes suit your driving style? How difficult is it to adjust?

I definitely liked the power of the 990s – you could spin up the rear wheel with your knee down – it was fun and I thought it was something that was to my advantage. But you know I quite like riding the 800s and you can be really aggressive with them. I’ve made a few adjustments to my riding style and I’m still working on how to get the best out of the bike.