San Carlo Honda Gresini Team riders Toni Elias and Alex De Angelis completed their final day of preseason testing at Jerez today, just two weeks before the 2009 MotoGP World Championship gets underway in Qatar. The bright sunshine from yesterday afternoon continued this morning although the track was somewhat cooler, making set-up work on their Honda RC212V machinery and Bridgestone tyres tricky.
Elias worked tirelessly but with little reward alongside crew chief Fabrizio Cecchini in order to find more rear traction for his factory-spec machine but the track lower temperatures made this a virtually impossible task. The Spaniard pushed hard during the afternoon’s televised 45-minute ‘qualifying’ session - with the prize of a brand new car for the fastest rider – and he shaved almost a second off his best time from yesterday but he could only manage ninth place overall, 1.620 seconds off the best effort of pacesetter Casey Stoner.
Alex De Angelis had also struggled to match the good feeling he had found yesterday on the colder track. Having used up a fresh tyre in his crash he had to run used rubber this morning and in the timed session he could only lap fifteenth fastest, after running eighth quickest yesterday. The test came to an early finish for the riders when heavy rain arrived at the circuit around five minutes before the end of the timed session.
Toni Elias (9th; 1’40.266): “It was more difficult today because of the cooler temperatures but it is the same for everybody and the fact is that even though the track was cold, Stoner was hot! We’re not happy to be 1.6 seconds behind him but with the difficulties we’re having in setting the bike up at the moment, it is to be expected. The important thing is that we know what we have to work on, we’ve known it since Qatar, but it is clear that the solution wasn’t going to come to us at this circuit. We have to be patient because we know the bike is good, we have a great package and a great team – we just need a bit more time to work things out. We have good data from Qatar and I can’t wait to get there and go racing again.
Alex De Angelis (15th 1’40.869): “Unfortunately after the crash yesterday I had to use a new tyre so that meant I had to run a used tyre this morning and that is obviously not the ideal way to test new technical solutions with the bike. We’ve been off the pace here today but we’re going to keep working hard to be in the mix in Qatar. Our problem has been getting heat into the tyre but hopefully the track conditions are going to be warmer once the season starts than they have been in testing so we’re still optimistic and very determined about what lies ahead.”
Fausto Gresini - Team Manager:“It has been a difficult day for us today and a difficult test in general. We know we have a good bike but at the moment we are not converting it into a good package and here at Jerez we haven’t quite been able to get our head around the issues we’re having. We could do with a bit more time to test the bike and find the right balance for it. We know it has huge potential but at the moment we’re not getting 100% out of it.”
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