De Angelis hopes result will keep him in MotoGP

San Carlo Honda Gresini rider Alex de Angelis achieved a timely fourth place at Phillip Island on Sunday to round off a good weekend in Australia and bounce back from two consecutive DNF results.

Indeed, the performance saw him move back up to seventh in the standings after he had dropped down to 12th at Estoril and the 25 year-old looked competitive on all three days ‘Down Under’.

The man from San Marino, who is still to announce his plans for 2010 but still has some hope of remaining in MotoGP as a Honda satellite rider, was keen to make a good impression throughout the weekend and he raised eyebrows with his timesheet-topping performance in the Sunday morning warm-up, having also ridden well on Friday and Saturday.

The former 250cc Grand Prix winner stated, “I am very happy about this result. Fourth place is a suitable reward for the work we have done, after being consistently competitive all weekend. It was also great to run near the front in the opening laps, as that does not happen every week.”

Reviewing the visit to Phillip Island from a technical perspective, he added, “The key to the good result was that there is just one slow corner, where we had problems with grip, but the rest of the circuit is fast and I was able to get the most out of the bike elsewhere.”

On his MotoGP future he also stated, “Obviously its good to achieve this result at the moment as I am still waiting to sign a contract for next year. My father and my legal representative are in negotiations with the Team Scot boss Cirano Mularoni, so I hope this result helps with finalising our agreement.”