Having failed to crack the top ten in either a qualifying session or race during the opening three rounds of the 2008
MotoGP season,
Toni Elias was pleased to get the chance to visit the Ducati factory recently and air his concerns directly to Ducati Corse general director Filippo Preziosi.
The Spaniard took three podiums as a satellite Honda rider during 2006-2007, including one race victory, but has so far struggled to extract such competitiveness from his new Alice-run Desmosedici.
Indeed, of the four Ducati riders, only
Casey Stoner appears able to 'unlock' the GP8 - and even the reigning MotoGP world champion has faced difficulties at the last two rounds.
"I am ready for this race thanks to last week's visit to Ducati in Bologna, where I had the opportunity to speak about my situation directly with Filippo Preziosi, Ducati Corse General Director," said Elias, speaking on the eve of this weekend's Chinese Grand Prix at Shanghai.
"We spoke about my situation with the bike and I hope that in the next few grands prix we will be able to improve our results, which haven't been very exciting until now.
"I am happy because even though I am on a satellite team I feel Ducati is really backing me," insisted the Spaniard. "They really care to us doing well and not only the official team. At Estoril I didn't do very well although it is one of my favourite tracks. Now we will see if the test we did in Portugal, where we improved our lap performances, will enable us to be more competitive here.
"Ducati and
Bridgestone are two great companies. After these firsts races, they are listening to us about every single detail to try and become more competitive on track. They speak with us at length to understand which is the best direction to take to improve our performances.
"We hope that from this grand prix we will see the first good results of all the hard work we have done," Toni added.
The Shanghai circuit should at least allow the Desmosedici riders to exploit their power advantage, although the difference in top speed between the MotoGP manufacturers isn't expected to be as great as at the 2007 event.
