Double top ten for Gresini pair

Marco Simoncelli secured another promising result at the Gran Premio A-Style de Aragón in hid debut season in the premier class, and it is a sign of the young Italian’s progress that he was even left expecting slightly more than his finish of seventh on Sunday.

“I’m quite happy even if after the warm up I perhaps expected something more, but the other riders today were faster than me,” explained Simoncelli. “I had a good pace, one I expected after practice. For the first five or six laps I was fast but when the tyres went off I dropped down.”

He added: “I hope to improve on this result in the next races but I’m happy overall with the weekend.”

Team-mate Marco Melandri was not satisfied with his position of ninth however as he continued to experience difficulties in the search for a positive feeling with his RC212V machine.

“I’m not very happy about the race because we struggled,” he said. “For the first three or four laps we were very slow so we lost the chance to get a good rhythm, and we couldn’t brake very hard so it was very tough to pass the guys who were slower than me. We couldn’t find a way.”

Melandri concluded: “We will try again in the next few races and it’s been a disappointing season for me.”