The Malaysian Grand Prix started out in positive fashion for Team San Carlo Honda Gresini, the final chapter of an intercontinental MotoGP tour and the penultimate round of the 2008 season.
Shinya Nakano showed good form in the opening free practice session this morning and in the afternoon he confirmed his good feeling with the RC212V at Sepang, dominating the time sheets throughout the session before being dislodged by Edwards, Rossi and Stoner in the final few minutes. However, he remained the top Honda rider on the combined time sheets.
Alex De Angelis was a little way behind his team-mate today, despite working hard on the setting of his 2008 version satellite machine. He will continue to work in tomorrow’s final free practice session before qualifying takes place in the afternoon.
Shinya Nakano (4th - 2’03’’050):
“I’m satisfied with this day of free practice. The morning session didn’t go badly and I managed to set some consistent lap times. The afternoon went even better despite the mixed conditions, with a couple of raindrops falling and a potential downpour looming. It meant we didn’t get to complete as many laps as we would have liked but despite the conditions my lap times were still fast and continually improving. I hope we can continue like this tomorrow because it will give us a good shot at qualifying.”
Alex De Angelis (17th - 2’04’’256):
“In the final stages of the second practice we put on a different rear tyre, on the advice of Bridgestone, which improved my feeling with the bike quite a lot. Unfortunately I was only able to get four laps on it before the time ran out and I’m sure we could have made major improvements on the lap times from the morning session and the first half of this afternoon. We’ve got plenty of work to do tomorrow - we made some changes to the second bike this afternoon, some of which were quite effective, so we want to incorporate those to the race bike.”
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