Nicky Hayden has sealed fifth place in the final World Superbike riders' cham🍃pionship after an impressive pit-lane start to seventh place dash in the final race of the year in Qatar.

The former MotoGP world🉐 champion was forced from his second place grid slot to start with a five-second time penalty in the pit-lane after exceeding the number of permitted engin𝔉es in a season.

Having benefitted from the red flag in the initial r♈ace to bunch the pack back up, Hayden carved his way up from 15th to seventh in the 10-lap sprint race which saw him round out a solid rookie year in World Superbikes wit꧙h fifth in the final standings, narrowly behind Honda team-mate Michael van der Mark.

"Towards the end of the race yesterday we started experiencing a little bit of a problem," Hayden said. We hoped it was due to some changes we made but as soon as I went out in the warm up it was still there so I only did one lap and tha🐈t was it.

"The team had to change the engine and we had to start from the pit-lane, which is not nice but those are the rules❀▨.

"All things considered, given the ti✅me we also lost in warm up, it was not easy but we salvaged something. I want to thank the team, all my crew, the sponsors and everybody behind me: I'm now looking forward to next year."

Having given the older Honda Fireblade a send off in Qatar, Hayden will commence work developing t🙈he new CBR1000RR into a championship-contender for 2017 as he aims to close the gap on Kౠawasaki and Ducati.