De Angelis and Elías ponder Montmeló experience

The 12th place achieved by Alex de Angelis at the Gran Premi Cinzano de Catalunya on Sunday was not cause for celebration in the San Carlo Honda Gresini box, but the man from San Marino put in a long day of testing on Monday and felt it had been worthwhile.

De Angelis completed 69 laps on his satellite RC212V and was able to improve on his times from the GP itself in the first day of post-race testing in 2009 - ending up ninth on the timesheet.

Afterwards, he commented, “It feels like there is some light at the end of the tunnel. I went faster than I could on Sunday, in terms of one-off laps and race pace. The top riders are still too far ahead of us but we feel like we are taking steps in the right direction.”

“With our grip problems we have also found a way forward. Previously when we found a way forward with grip we were compromising in terms of stability on tight corners, but now I feel like I can get out of the corners better,” De Angelis added.

Antonio Jiménez, chief mechanic for De Angelis in the Gresini-managed Honda team, also commented, “It was an important day and it looks positive that we are finally addressing this grip issue.”

“As we are not an official factory team we have to work at the maximum with the material we have and then we can speak to Honda about what other possibilities there are. We are not going to challenge to win the championship so our objective has to be repeating results like Alex’s sixth place in Qatar.”

On the other side of the garage Toni Elías was downbeat about Barcelona in general, having crashed out of his home race, and then having ended the test day 12th fastest of 15 riders present.

“We haven’t really made any progress from Sunday, but testing is always important for deciding what direction to go in. It hasn’t been a great day, so we hope things will be better at Assen next time around.”