Melandri enjoys busy contest in Germany

Marco Melandri left the Alice Motorrad Grand Prix Deutschland on Sunday afternoon in sixth place overall in the MotoGP World Championship, with another good result adding to his excellent efforts in the first half of the season.

The Italian competitor has battled against the odds through nine tough rounds thus far with the Hayate Racing team and after a disappointing qualifying session on Saturday – in which he crashed and ended up 13th – Melandri made up for it in the race.

On his Sachsenring performance, which saw him push his way through to seventh by the end of the 30-lap contest, Melandri stated, “It was a good race for me and in the dry I knew I had a good pace. Actually I made a good start and then on the first corner quite a few riders took me wide, I almost went off track, I lost a lot time and I was almost in last place. Then I found a good rhythm and I started to recover after battling with several riders.”

“I lost a little bit of focus because of something on my visor and Toni Elías came past me,” Melandri continued. “I tried to get back in front of him because I think I was a bit faster but I couldn’t do it and it was a nice battle anyway.”

Concluding his review of the German visit and looking ahead to the next round in England, where Melandri was resident for several years, he stated, “The bike worked quite well this weekend and it is the first time I have ridden it in really wet conditions, so we got some good information. We are very much looking forward to the next round because I think the bike could work well at Donington so I can’t wait to get back on track.”