San Carlo Honda Gresini facing uphill struggle for raceday

San Carlo Honda Gresini riders Shinya Nakano and Alex de Angelis will have to fight their way through the field in Sunday´s race at Valencia, after qualifying low down the order on Saturday afternoon.

Shinya Nakano - Fifteenth

`This was the final qualifying session of the season and I pushed as hard as I could. My pace at the start was really good but unfortunately on the second qualifying tyre I lost the front in turn four and crashed. Maybe the tyre wasn´t up to temperature. At that point I returned to the box as quick as I could and got back out on the second bike but I couldn´t make any significant improvement because of the traffic on the track. Obviously I am disappointed because it´s a repeat of the situation in Malaysia last week, when everything was going well but messed up at the end. Anyway, the race is tomorrow and I'll be trying to repeat my performance from Brno and Sepang, with another good result.´

Alex de Angelis - Sixteenth

`It has been a really difficult day for lots of reasons, from the weather to the bike setting. We went into qualifying without having ridden the bike in the dry and even though I went well at the start, running in the top six or seven, I wasn´t able to improve on a qualifying tyre. Anyway, on race tyres my pace isn´t bad and the obvious plan is to try to get a good start and make up some positions.´