From the three rounds so far held, de Angelis has started from a high of twelfth on the grid and taken a best race finish of eleventh.
That doesn't compare favourably with fellow 250GP graduates
Jorge Lorenzo and Andrea Dovizioso: Lorenzo has taken three poles and three podiums - including a debut win in Sunday's Portuguese Grand Prix - while Dovizioso has qualified a best of seventh, finished a high of fourth and ran with the race leaders for the first half of Sunday's race.
Despite no prior grand prix experience in any class, the other 2008
MotoGP rookie - World Superbike champion
James Toseland - has also turned heads by qualifying second and finishing sixth, twice.
de Angelis, who finished second 16 times as a 250cc rider - winning just once - has undeniable raw speed, performed promisingly in winter testing and is riding equal (satellite) Honda machinery to Dovizioso, so what is the problem?
Tyres, it seems. Gresini Honda is the only RCV team running Bridgestone rubber, a tactic that netted five podiums for
Marco Melandri and
Toni Elias during Michelin's 2007 'slump'.
But while the French brand has undoubtedly rebounded in style during the early rounds of 2008, the Gresini team's main problem seems to be not so much the name on the side of their tyres, but getting rubber designed
specifically for the characteristics of their motorcycle.
Honda is now the only MotoGP manufacturer without at least one factory rider on Bridgestone rubber - the official Repsol Honda team having stuck with Michelin - and it appears Gresini team-mates de Angelis and
Shinya Nakano might have been struggling to get their voices heard.
'The Team San Carlo Honda Gresini pair got through a huge programme of work alongside
Bridgestone's technicians, who gathered crucial data that will help develop tyres specifically suited to the Honda RC212V,' read Gresini's post-Estoril test press statement.
Note the word 'specifically'.
Either way, it was a positive test for de Angelis, who dropped almost two seconds from his best lap during Sunday's race, in which he claimed his best-yet eleventh place.
