Toni Elias will head for his winter holiday a happy man after making substantial progress during the second and final day of the
Jerez test.
After a season on a satellite Ducati, Elias returns to Honda Gresini as a factory supported RCV rider for 2009, although the Spaniard - like team-mate
Alex de Angelis - has been using an ex-
Shinya Nakano valve-spring '08 factory machine for post-season testing.
Having been eighth fastest on day one of the Spanish test, Elias improved by 1.231sec on day two to claim fourth position out of the 14 riders with a best lap just over one-second from
Valentino Rossi and
Dani Pedrosa, but just 0.022sec from third fastest
Jorge Lorenzo.
Elias will made his debut on a 2009 (pneumatic) factory Honda during the first test of next year, at Sepang from February 5-7.
"I'm very happy to be back in the Gresini team and back on a Honda," said Toni. "We started out yesterday working step by step because I want to work in a calm, logical manner to avoid mistakes. We worked mostly on the rear end, because I have had some traction problems. We tested some different set-up solutions, focusing on adapting the bike to the new
Bridgestone tyres.
"I'm happy because today we found a good compromise between bike set-up and the tyres and I also has a better feeling with the rear tyre. My lap times were faster and I felt more comfortable. Of course, we need to keep working but I think we did a very good job here, preparing for the Sepang tests when we will get the bike that we will use during the 2009 season," he added.
2008 rookie de Angelis was also impressive, improving his best lap time by almost one second to finish the test 0.038sec and one place behind Elias.
