French GP: Gresini Racing Friday report

POSITIVE FIRST DAY AT LE MANS FOR TEAM SAN CARLO HONDA GRESINI PAIR

Team San Carlo Honda Gresini riders Marco Melandri and Marco Simoncelli continued with the positive trend of their recent progress by following up a good weekend at Jerez last time out with an encouraging start to proceedings at Le Mans. The first free practice at the French circuit was never going to be easy as they looked to adapt their settings to its contrasting characteristics but as the laps went by a host of small changes improved their pace and they were able to gather crucial set-up information for the weekend ahead.

Marco Melandri (10th - 1'35.643) "It was a good session -- we had a few problems to solve at the start because we were a long way off with the base setting, especially the engine braking, and it took us a while to fix it. We had two completely different configurations to try and at the end on the second bike we think we had something better but I was only able to do four laps on a race tyre. I still did my fastest lap of the session on that run so that shows we're on the right lines. I am really satisfied with this and optimistic for the rest of the weekend. We obviously still have a lot of work to do but the bike is responding to my style of riding and I am getting more and more comfortable with it."

Marco Simoncelli (12th - 1'35.959) " I was happy to get so many laps in because it was important for me to get confident with the bike before making any changes to it and I think that was the right tactic. At the moment we still have some problems to solve but it was important for us to localise the problems first and we have done that so the signs are good. We came to Le Mans with the set-up from Jerez, which clearly doesn't work well here, so we need to work on the balance and weight transfer. I'm confident because the last few times I've ridden this bike have been positive and that means we just need to keep working in the same way."

Fausto Gresini " There is obviously still a lot of work to do but I'm fairly happy so far. The guys have never ridden these particular bikes at Le Mans so we had to work on things like the chassis setting and gearbox ratios. After the progress we made at Jerez we came to Le Mans feeling convinced we could improve still further, or at least that is the intention. Both our riders have done a good job today and gathered plenty of information to help us keep doing this over the rest of the weekend. "

-source: gresini racing