de Angelis Interwetten Honda ride confirmed

The Interwetten Honda team has officially confirmed that Alex de Angelis will return to MotoGP in place of the injured Hiroshi Aoyama from the forthcoming Sachsenring round until the Japanese is fit to return.

de Angelis - who rode for two seasons in MotoGP with Honda Gresini, culminating in a second place at the 2009 Indianapolis round - will then return to Team Scot in the Moto2 class.

"This is a very good chance for me and I am very happy. It is a very nice team with a Honda bike. I can come back to MotoGP through this opportunity," said de Angelis, eighth overall in last year's MotoGP World Championship.

"I will compete four or five races and have enough time to improve the settings and my feeling for the bike. So it is possible to have some good results, even though it is very difficult. I will do my best not to disappoint the team.

"I like all the tracks that are coming now and had success on each of them and I am looking forward for this new challenge."

The Sammarinese takers the place of HRC test rider Kousuke Akiyoshi, who has filled in for Aoyama at Assen and this weekend Catalunya round.

"This replacement solution is satisfying for everybody," said team owner Daniel Epp. "I want to underline that of course I look forward to welcome back Hiroshi fully recovered latest in Arag?n in September, but as the team's work has to go on, I am also happy that with Alex we have an experienced and powerful Honda rider, who already showed for example in Indianapolis last year what he is capable of achieving. He knows all the tracks that are coming now and I expect a lot from him."

This picture showing de Angelis and Epp shaking on a deal was published on Crash.net last night.