The San Carlo Honda Gresini rider was fourth fastest in FP1 at Losail on Thursday, with coworker Hiroshi Aoyama 12th.
Marco Simoncelli carried his preseason form into the first official session of the MotoGP World Championship this afternoon in the surreal surroundings of the Losail circuit. The Team San Carlo Honda Gresini rider was fast and consistent and worked intensely throughout a satisfactory 45 minutes to find an improved set-up for his machine. It was a optimistic evening for Hiroshi Aoyama even though he was further down the time sheets, the Japanese rider clearly working on the right lines with his team and set-up, which will hopefully lead them to a better position tomorrow.
“I am really happy because it is always hard during testing to know exactly where you are but that changes when things get serious and we are able to make more a real analysis. I am satisfied because we struggled to get the hard tyre working during the tests but we found amazing tonight. It may be that the conditions are somewhat different but it is an important step towards making our choice for the race. We managed to make two changes to the set-up that better things further and now it is just a case of confirming what we already know and getting ready for Sunday. In universal I am feeling confident.”
Hiroshi Aoyama (12th 1’’ 56” 987):
”This was the first sitting of the season s o I was keen to do well. We in progress work on finding the best set-up for Sunday and the best feeling with the bike, working from what we learned in testing. We also tried to get closer to a decision on what tyre to use for the race. The conditions are improved than they were in testing and tomorrow we will try to improve on today's position, which is in fact not that significant because our focus for the day was not specifically on the lap time.”
