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Disappointment for Gresini riders

The Grand Prix of China didn't go to plan for Team San Carlo Honda Gresini today - after showing outstanding potential during practice neither Shinya Nakano nor Alex De Angelis were able to repeat that level of performance in the race. 

Nakano nevertheless came away with an important top-ten finish, which also lifts him to tenth in the championship. De Angelis bad luck continued however, the San Marino rider being hit by a rival early in the race and eventually missing out on the points by a single position down in 16th.

"The track conditions weren't easy today because there were still damp patches when we started," said Nakano. "It wasn't actually a bad start for me and I made up some positions. In the second half of the race my pace improved and I was able to pass Dovizioso for tenth, although I'm not satisfied with that. Now we have to take the positives out of this weekend for the next race in France. If we can show the same kind of pace that we did here in practice and get a good grid position then I'm sure we can look forward to much better at Le Mans."

Alex De Angelis commented, "We knew it wouldn't be easy for us in the dry but early in the race I was hit by Hopkins when we were braking into turn one and we both ran wide, although thankfully neither of us crashed. From then on it wasn't easy to stay in touch with the group and virtually impossible to get amongst them. The bike was becoming harder to ride as the race wore on and we have to study the telemetry to find out why. I think we need to go back to the setting we had in preseason and start again."

Team boss Fausto Gresini added, "Shanghai is a fast track and that hasn't helped us. With Shinya we have worked well all weekend but Alex had trouble in certain sections of the track that we didn't manage to solve. Shinya is disappointed but it is important that he is taking small steps forward. Now we go to France looking to continue that improvement but we need to speed it up. We should have some new stuff at Le Mans and I think we can look forward to a good race there."

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