Saturday, August 23, 2008

Nakano getting positive feeling from new RC212V

Shinya Nakano´s good feeling with the new Honda RC212V continued in testing this week at Brno, on the back of a great debut race for the Japanese rider on the updated machine.

Shinya Nakano and his chief mechanic Antonio Jimenez in the San Carlo Honda Gresini box

San Carlo Honda Gresini rider Shinya Nakano made the most of two days of sunshine on Monday and Tuesday at Brno to accumulate further valuable experience on the new RC212V, the satellite 2009 version of the machine which he successfully debuted during the Cardion ab Grand Prix Ceske republiky.

Despite limited dry set-up time with the new bike before Sunday´s race the 30 year-old Japanese rider ran to a season-best result of fourth in the Czech contest, before putting in 94 test laps over two subsequent test days at Brno, ending up fifth fastest overall with a best lap of 1´57.559 on Tuesday.

After the test, Nakano told motogp.com, `After the mixed weather over the weekend it was useful to test on Monday and Tuesday and we looked at tyres and suspension. We also confirmed the correct race set-up. Everything we did over the two days was an improvement, on both the front and the rear, so I am happy about the test.´

`The combination of the new bike and the Bridgestone tyres is good,´ Nakano continued. `Especially with the front end feeling, corner entry is much more stable. I was able to use quite a hard front tyre, which should be good for races. This track at Brno is quite special, so I hope everything works well at Misano.´

With his future in MotoGP as yet unconfirmed beyond the end of the current campaign Nakano revealed his thoughts on the subject, declaring, `I would like to stay with the Gresini team. This is my first year with them but I already feel at home and everybody works very hard. The team is at a high level and we get very good support from Honda.´

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