“It was really important that we managed to get a good pace together during practice at Shanghai and for that reason I feel optimistic about Le Mans. We want to repeat our good performance from China but this time in the race too – not just in practice. If we manage that then we can set our sights on the top seven. If you're in there then anything can happen in a race and you can be in the right place for a great result. We're going to a circuit that I like and that is also more suited to our bike compared to Shanghai so we can do well.”

FAUSTO GRESINI – TEAM MANAGER
“Shinya showed great progress in Shanghai, setting lap times that were up there with the best and putting together a good rhythm on race tyres in practice. That improvement is important for everybody, even though the result in the race was below our expectations. For Alex the situation is a little more difficult at the moment – after so many crashes he's focusing on not making mistakes and trying to understand the bike better. In any case he is learning quickly, he is a fast rider as he has shown many times and I'm sure that before long we'll see him chasing down the lead guys. Le Mans is quite favourable for our bike; the straights are not long so we should be able to hold our own.”

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