The 2008
MotoGP season looks to have been the first and last on a Ducati for
Toni Elias, after the Spaniard criticised the lack of technical support he received this season.
Elias, riding alongside
Sylvain Guintoli at the satellite Alice Team, only finished in the top ten once (eighth) during the opening four rounds, and couldn't qualify higher than 14th.
Toni claims the parts needed to improve the situation were requested at the following French Grand Prix - but took until round ten, in Germany, to arrive.
"We'd asked for new parts in Le Mans this year, and they didn't arrive until the race at Sachsenring. Until then we were just fighting not to finish last," the official MotoGP website quotes Elias as saying.
"When we finally received them we made a leap in performance, and we got back in the top ten, so for me Germany is when the second part of the season began."
Rain on race day left Elias twelfth in Germany, while team-mate Guintoli took his best result of the year (sixth without traction control). Elias was looking much more competitive in the following US Grand Prix - rising to sixth place by lap five - until a mistake dropped him back down the order.
The #24 made no such errors in Brno and, while Ducati's reigning world champion
Casey Stoner crashed out of the lead, Elias claimed second position behind
Valentino Rossi.
Elias backed that up with third position next time out at Misano, making him the only Ducati rider other than Stoner to finish on the podium all season - and the first satellite Ducati rider ever to take two podium finishes.
Despite those results, Toni's subsequent decision not to remain at Alice for 2009 saw the technical support 'disappear'.
"I told Ducati what my plans were for 2009 in Motegi, and from that moment on the parts disappeared," he said. "From then on it was back to the lower half of the standings."
Elias finished 16th, 11th, 15th and 18th in the four races after Japan.
Elias had agreed a return to Honda Gresini, for whom he rode in 2006 and 2007 - when he took his first and so far only MotoGP race win in spectacularly style at Estoril.
