Outperformed by his new team-mate Alex de Angelis at the Losail International Circuit on Monday, Toni Elías is looking for better than ninth placed finishes this season on a factory RC212V but after struggling with the set-up of his Honda machine all weekend in Qatar the Spaniard was not too downbeat about the result.
De Angelis’ good run to sixth place in the desert will have caught Elías’ eye as he crossed the line just inside the top ten and at the next round in Japan he will be determined to beat the man whom he has joined in the pitbox this year, as he returns to the San Carlo Honda Gresini team.
Elías new team-mate has a satellite Honda, but team manager Fausto Gresini has negotiated factory support for the 26 year-old in 2009, which means he may get help from HRC before next week’s Polini Grand Prix of Japan – although of course the pressure is on the rider himself to deliver results.
“Taking into account where we started from and the problems we had this weekend, this is a decent result for us and I’m satisfied,” said Elías as he took the positives from Monday’s re-arranged race, which he started 12th on the grid. “In terms of points it probably would have been better for us if the race was cancelled here because we knew it would be tough for us but the truth is that if you had offered me ninth place on Friday, I probably would have taken it!”
“I’m always better in races than in practice and that was also the case in Qatar as I made up three places from the start,” he added. “It is still not the kind of result we want, but given the situation we took some important points.”
Attempting to explain what had restricted him at the Arabian track Elías stated, “We’ve got some big problems with the chassis and the suspension in general, which means we are making the tryes do a lot of work. That is the main problem at the moment. With the team and hopefully a bit of help from Honda we’ll see if we can prepare ourselves a bit better for Japan.”