M2: San Marino GP: Gresini Racing Friday report

The Gran Premio di Misano e della Riviera di Rimini is a special event for Team Gresini as it takes place just a few kilometres from their racing headquarters. As such Fausto Gresini wanted to share it fully with a partner that has given its full ...

The Gran Premio di Misano e della Riviera di Rimini is a special event for Team Gresini as it takes place just a few kilometres from their racing headquarters. As such Fausto Gresini wanted to share it fully with a partner that has given its full support to the team in recent years and sent Toni Elias out onto the track for the first Moto2 session in San Carlo colours. The Spaniard is still recovering from the effects of his illness at Indianapolis and even though he remained some way off full fitness as he headed out today he managed to lap fifth fastest.

Toni Elias (5th - 1'40.488): "The fever at Indianapolis has left me weak and without energy so I've struggled today but hopefully I can be better for qualifying tomorrow and the race on Sunday. We'll make a couple of small changes tomorrow but in terms of the set-up we are pretty much ready."

Tatsuya Yamaguchi (36th - 1'43.462): "Everything was new to me today and first of all I had to get used to the track. I had a small crash but I think tomorrow will be very different and I'll be able to make some big improvements to my lap times."

Fausto Gresini: "From a technical point of view we're in quite good shape. Unfortunately Toni hasn't been able to fully recover from Indianapolis yet so it was a case of not pushing too hard today. Tomorrow we'll look at making a couple of changes but we had a positive first day. We also have to take into account that there are a couple of extra Italian riders out there who are not involved in the fight for the championship but will be desperate to get involved at the front. There will be that extra adrenaline that you get from racing at home and they will be dangerous rivals on Sunday, although we're not worried about that."