Nicky Hayden was born into a family of dirt track racing enthusiasts. Both his parents had competed in dirt track events, and their three sons and one of their daughters, all competed from an early age.
As a child, Nicky told his father that he wanted to be the World Champion of MotoGP, the pinnacle of two-wheeled road racing, and so the Hayden family travelled across the country to allow their sons Tommy, Nicky and Roger-Lee, to follow their dreams.
As a five-year-old, Hayden competed against seven to eleven year olds in the 80cc category and has always been the “young gun” of whatever series he’s raced in.
Hayden turned pro and focused solely on road-racing at age 16, making a full time entrance into the American National Championship, the AMA Road Racing Series, in 1998. Hayden was successful from the word “go”, contesting both the 600cc and 750cc Supersport categories and taking his first win in the respective series at Willow Springs and Laguna Seca. He finished 4th in both series and cemented his status as one of the riders to watch for the future.
1999 saw Hayden beat older brother Tommy to win his first AMA title- the Supersport 600cc crown. He took five wins, taking his 600 win tally up to six. Hayden also contested the Formula Extreme category, taking seven wins and finishing in the runner-up spot. On top of the title, he was also named the AMA/Grand National Dirt Track Rookie of the year as well as the AMA/Speedvision Pro Athlete of the Year! Despite racing competitvely in two different series, Hayden also steped in for the injured Miguel Duhamel and took a third place in Colorado. And if you thought that wasn’t enough, Nicky still managed to compete in 12 of the 18 Grand National Dirt Track events!
After his meteoric rise in 1999, Hayden was ready to join the big boys in the AMA Superbike Championship. Hayden signed with American Honda, and quickly set the Superbike world alight with his first victory in June at Road Atlanta, and notched up victories at Laguna Seca and Willow Springs, ending his first season in second, just five points behind eventual winner, Mat Mladin!
Hayden was favourite to topple Mladin for the title in 2001, but got his season off to a bad start, before rebounding to take victory in the last four races of the season, finishing third overall.
2002 was the year Hayden truly asserted his dominance. He took nine victories from 16, to be crowned as the youngest ever AMA Superbike Champion at the age of 21 and two weeks, in August at Virginia. Hayden also entered in the World Superbikes round at Laguna Seca as a wildcard, taking 4th place in race one. Touted as one of the hottest properties in road racing, Hayden signed to Repsol Honda Racing, and was ready to make the move up to MotoGP, home of the world’s elite motorcycle racers.
The move to Repsol Honda was a huge gamble- MotoGP was an entirely different kettle of fish to the AMA, and the move to Europe- alone at 21- was just as daunting. But Hayden’s new team happened to be the top team in the MotoGP field, and his team mate was none other than the legendary Valentino Rossi- already a four-time World Champion at the age of 23. Hayden was determined to make the best of his chance, and learn as much as possible.
He made his debut at Suzuka, Japan in March. The race was marred by a huge crash, and later, the death of Japanese star, Daijiro Kato, which was really not the way you would want to enter MotoGP. Hayden took a rather impressive on his debut outing. Throughout the year, Hayden netted many top-10 finishes, and took his first podium at race when rider was disqualified.
He took his first “real” podium at Phillip Island in Australia, and finished his first season 5th in the standings, and was awarded the coveted “Rookie of the Year” title.
In 2004, things didn’t go quite as smoothly. Hayden struggled a bit over the year, and while he took two podiums at place and Rio, he crashed his motorcycle whilst being interviewed for a magazine and missed the Portuguese GP. He finished the year in 8th position.
Hayden knew that he would have to improve his 2004 placing if he was going to have a stable career in MotoGP. Again, he struggled to find consistency in the first half of the season, but everything changed when the series moved to Laguna Seca for the first time 13 years. Hayden made the most of his track knowledge and went on to record his first pole position in MotoGP. The following day, Hayden led start-to-finish to take his very first MotoGP victory, on home turf! After the success at Laguna Seca, Hayden took five podiums in the remaining nine races, including pole on his 24th birthday in Germany and another pole at Phillip Island. Hayden narrowly lost ouf to Marco Melandri for 2nd place at the series end in Valencia, but netting a strong 3rd showed his potential for the following year…
Hayden started off his title-winning season in style, taking 9 podiums, including 2 wins, in the first 11 races, but struggled with his new bike in the second half of the season. Honda gave him parts to test every race, which took the focus away from his title challenge. It was almost as if Honda didn’t regard their star rider as championship material!!! At Estoril, Pedrosa infamously collided with Hayden, sending both out of the race and potentially ending his World Title dreams. Honda’s motives were questioned and luckily, Toni Elias beat Rossi to the win, meaning that Hayden had to come back from 8 points down to win at Valencia. Rossi may have had the luck at Estoril, but it was on Hayden’s side at Valencia, with the Italian crashing while Hayden cruised to 3rd and took his first World Championship, a feat he dreamed of when he was young.
Hayden opted to race 2007 with the #1 on his bike instead of his familir 69. Sadly, it didn’t offer him a lot of luck. The change to 800cc from 990cc meant that Hayden struggled to adapt his style to the bike, which required fast corner speeds to get it going. Hayden could only manage a 4th at Donington before he managed to up his game and take consecutive 3rd places at Assen and Germany. Hayden collided with John Hopkins only seconds into the race at Laguna Seca, which ended his race and dreams of taking the “three-peat” at the American circuit. Hayden took a 3rd at Brno, which was to be his last podium for over a year, and ended up a very average 8th in the final standings, not a good title defence year by his own standards.
2008 was to be his last season for the Repsol Honda team, and it was pretty average to begin with. The bike was still not to Hayden’s liking, and a number of top-10 places were all he could muster. He narrowly missed finishing 3rd at Assen when he ran out of fuel on the final few corners of the race, and only managed 5th at his home race of Laguna. Then to make things worse, Hayden fractured his right heel while training for the X-Games in Los Angeles, which he intended to do as a bit of fun while on holidays. His injury kept him out of the following two GP’s in order to be as fit as possible for his second home GP at Indianapolis, its inaugural race on the MotoGP calendar. It rained cats and dogs, with hurricanes swirling around the Mid-East of the US, but that didn’t stop Hayden! He was cheered on by his adoring fans into an incredible 2nd position when the race was stopped prematurely. This ignited a fire inside Hayden, and he finished the remaining 4 GP’s in the top 5, taking a 3rd at Phillip Island, his last for Repsol Honda. Hayden ended his final season with HRC in 6th place after recovering a lot of lost ground in the standings.
After 99 races with Honda, Nicky’s foray into 2009 with Ducati will be an interesting one. He still remains one of the fastest and determined riders in the championship, but also is among the most favourite, being universally loved by GP fans all across the globe.
