The San Carlo Honda Gresini rider Toni Elias wiped a stunning 2.150 seconds off his best lap time from yesterday’s opening free practice to fire himself up the MotoGP order and secure fourth place on the grid for tomorrow’s San Marino Grand Prix. His team-mate Alex de Angelis was also in excellent form in this afternoon’s single qualifying practice but the local rider was unable to build on his impressive race pace after switching to a softer tyre in the later part of the session and despite spending the majority of the hour in the leading positions – twice topping the time sheets – he was relegated to seventh by the end.
Toni Elias (4th 1’34.907):
“I’m really pleased because nobody ever expects to improve by two seconds in one day. One second is quite easy, but two? It’s amazing really but it shows what a great job the team have done. I wasn’t happy yesterday but I knew exactly where the problems were and I was able to get the message across to the team, who responded perfectly once again. We still have a couple of things to work on and I’d like to take another step forward before the race to close the gap further on the three guys ahead of us, but for the moment I’m contented and excited about our chances tomorrow.”
Alex De Angelis (7th; 1’35.343):
“I started out the session well and we put a really good rhythm together on race tyres but for some reason we couldn’t make an improvement on the softer tyre and that’s a shame because even if we’d just found an extra tenth I’d have been on the second row. Anyway, the important thing is the race set-up and we’re in good shape, so if I can get a good start tomorrow then we can look forward to another good race. I have a lot of fans here and a lot of support from everybody in San Marino so it would be great to give them all something to celebrate.”
Fausto Gresini - Team Manager:
“Both Toni and Alex had a great session today – it was just a shame Alex ended up on the third row because he’s certainly got the pace to have another strong race tomorrow. It will be important for him to get a good start but we’re looking forward to it because we think both our riders are capable of challenging. We’ve worked really well as a team in recent weeks, the riders are putting in maximum effort and the results are showing, so I couldn’t be happier right now.”
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