Difficult first race for Alice Team

Round one of the 2008 World Championship did not produce the results that the new line-up of the Alice Team were hoping for in Qatar, although at least the teams riders Toni Elias and Sylvain Guintoli both finished the Losail race and got their first points on the board.

Luis dAntins outfit have been struggling to keep up with the MotoGP front runners during the winter testing period, with Elias and Guintoli like Ducati factory rider Marco Melandri still learning the peculiarities of the Bridgestone-shod Desmosedici which Casey Stoner puts to such good use.

Exciting Spaniard Elias started the race 14th and finished the contest in that position, while Guintoli made up two places from 17th to finish just inside the points, results which were disappointing for the teams Technical Director Fabiano Sterlacchini, who commented: I still have a bit of sour taste in my mouth because we could have surely done better.

Now we have to analyze the data because Toni was telling us about a problem with the front part of the bike. We had this problem for the whole weekend, but we didnt expect to compromise so much on performance. In the warm up, we had a rhythm of eight tenths of a second per lap faster and, seeing the race lap times, we could have fought for much better positions.

For his part Elias himself commented: Its not a positive result, I am not happy, it was a difficult race. I problems with the front, but we still dont know what happened. We have to check the data to understand the reasons why we were going almost a second per lap slower compare to the warm up.

This mornings rhythm could have allowed us to enter the top ten, but since the third lap things werent going as we expected. We only have to work hard. The team is doing its work and soon better results will come.