Spanish GP: Gresini Racing Friday notes

Team San Carlo Honda Gresini complete first European practice of the season

The first day of free practice for the Grand Prix of Spain took place today at Jerez de la Frontera and it ended in positive fashion for Team San Carlo Honda Gresini, with Alex De Angelis completing some valuable tyre work ahead of Sunday's race. The San Marino rider also worked on the setting of his bike as he attempted to shave vital tenths off his lap time by improving his feeling under braking. Shinya Nakano crashed on the final lap of his afternoon session, although the Japanese rider and his crew had made good use of the two practices as they gathered important data for the current track temperatures, which are higher than they were during the preseason test here.

Alex de Angelis (22 laps 1.41.189): "It has gone well because the lap times of the riders are all very close today and I'm convinced that with a few positive changes to the bike we can get much closer to the front. In qualifying tomorrow we'll have to work really hard on getting the most out of the softer tyre because it is the most decisive factor for us at the moment. My race pace is good and we have another couple of cards up our sleeve to play tomorrow in order to improve."

Shinya Nakano (24 laps 1.41.393): "Today we've closed the gap that there was to the other riders in Qatar and shaved off some important tenths. We are working hard to improve the feeling of the bike, working on the base setting we found during the IRTA tests here a couple of months ago. Today the temperature was higher than we expected so we decided to try a harder tyre to get more up-to-date information. The harder tyre was the reason for my crash but luckily we escaped without any injury."

-credit: gresiniracing.com