Melandri makes significant progress at round four

Surely one of the happiest men leaving the Shanghai paddock on Sunday evening would have been Marco Melandri, who for the first time looked competitive on the Ducati Marlboro Desmosedici GP8 this weekend, as he ran from twelfth on the grid to finish fifth at the Pramac Grand Prix of China.

`It was such a good race for me,´ said Melandri to motogp.com. `All the weekend it has been pretty tough because we have been working a lot and struggling a little bit. But we knew yesterday that we could find a better feeling with the bike and we could have a good race but I didn´t really know how good it could be.´

`I had a good start and then there was a hard battle at the beginning so I lost a bit of time,´ continued the Italian, `but after that I found my rhythm and I was able to overtake many riders. I was looking to overtake my team-mate but after the halfway point I slowed down a bit and he improved his lap times. Then Jorge Lorenzo passed me, I tried to fight with him but he was a bit faster and in the end I made a few mistakes so I think fifth is the best we could do.´