NAKANO MAKES TOP TEN AT SHANGHAI AS MISFORTUNE HITS DE ANGELIS
 The
Grand Prix of China didn't go to plan for Team San Carlo Honda
Gresini today – after showing outstanding potential
during practice neither Shinya Nakano nor Alex De Angelis
were able to repeat that level of performance in the race.
Shinya nevertheless came away with an important top-ten finish,
which also lifts him to tenth in the championship. Alex's
bad luck continued however, the San Marino rider being hit
by a rival early in the race and eventually missing out on
the points by a single position down in 16th.
Shinya Nakano (10th): “The track conditions
weren't easy today because there were still damp patches when
we started. It wasn't actually a bad start for me and I made
up some positions. In the second half of the race my pace
improved and I was able to pass Dovizioso for tenth, although
I'm not satisfied with that. Now we have to take the positives
out of this weekend for the next race in France. If we can
show the same kind of pace that we did here in practice and
get a good grid position then I'm sure we can look forward
to much better at Le Mans”.
Alex De Angelis (16th): “We knew it
wouldn't be easy for us in the dry but early in the race I
was hit by Hopkins when we were braking into turn one and
we both ran wide, although thankfully neither of us crashed.
From then on it wasn't easy to stay in touch with the group
and virtually impossible to get amongst them. The bike was
becoming harder to ride as the race wore on and we have to
study the telemetry to find out why. I think we need to go
back to the setting we had in preseason and start again.”
Fausto Gresini – TEAM MANAGER: “Shanghai
is a fast track and that hasn't helped us. With Shinya we
have worked well all weekend but Alex had trouble in certain
sections of the track that we didn't manage to solve. Shinya
is disappointed but it is important that he is taking small
steps forward. Now we go to France looking to continue that
improvement but we need to speed it up. We should have some
new stuff at Le Mans and I think we can look forward to a
good race there.”
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