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de Angelis: I'm a top rider! |
"Today I made many laps on my bike and even simulated a race: it was a tough session and one of the longest in my entire career, but in the end I managed to improve slightly my lap time from yesterday, which is positive," said de Angelis, after his 91 laps.
"This shows we are competitive and I believe that, with Bridgestone helping us, we will soon be able to do better. I am aware there is still lots of work to do, but I have proved to be a top rider already and this is a great satisfaction for me!" smiled the San Marinese, who finished in second position 16 times as a 250GP rider, but took just one victory.
Team-mate Shinya Nakano ran race simulation tyre tests for Bridgestone on the final day and also found time to test new qualifying rubber brought to the test by the Japanese manufacturer. Nakano left Australia one place and 0.290secs behind his rookie team-mate.
"Also today we have worked hard on different bike set-ups: our RC212V Honda bike is a very competitive machine and I believe we will be able to achieve good results during this year's championship," said Shinya. "We concentrated on race simulation but tested qualifying tyres as well; we now expect to receive new material from Bridgestone and are confident in their total support."
"It has been a very positive three day test for my team: the bike is competitive and both my riders have proved to have a good pace with race tyres," said team manager Fausto Gresini. "With qualifiers instead, we didn't produce satisfying results so we will have to work harder on this aspect. These tests gave us the chance to try different material and understand where we need to make some progress. On the whole I am very pleased with my team's work and my rider's results on track. We can now move to Malaysia for the last winter tests next week, with great enthusiasm."
