Third and fourth row starts at Assen for Nakano and De Angelis
Friday, 27 June 2008
After once again demonstrating good potential in free practice, San Carlo Honda Gresini´s Shinya Nakano and Alex de Angelis struggled to repeat that form in qualifying at Assen.
With Shinya Nakano sealing ninth place on the grid at the A-Style TT Assen, with his team-mate Alex De Angelis behind him on the fourth row in twelfth, it will be another major challenge for the San Carlo Honda Gresini pair in Saturday´s MotoGP contest.
Shinya Nakano – Ninth
`I expected a better result because we´ve been working well on qualifying tyres recently and the bike setting was good. A fast lap just didn´t come though and that may be because the front end was not our strongest point today. In any case, a third row start is not a disaster and we can still do well in tomorrow´s race.´
Alex de Angelis - Twelfth
`We´ve shown over the past few rounds that we have a good package in race trim and thanks to the support of Bridgestone we also have a tyre now that suits my style of riding. However, I´m still having trouble adapting my pace to a qualifying tyre and I can´t get the maximum out of it. I will be limited by my starting position but I showed today that my pace is good again. I did a couple of laps around 1´37.2 on race rubber so I´m confident, even though it is not easy to overtake here.´
