De Angelis expects to stay at the front

The Italian rookie took his first MotoGP podium by finishing second at Indianapolis a week ago, and was fourth fastest in practice in Italy today despite crashing early in the session.

"I'm really happy that we have started out so strongly again," he said. "We seem to have found a good base setting with the bike that is allowing us to go fast from the first day at pretty much any circuit and that is the fruit of a lot of hard work, which I have to thank my crew for."

De Angelis had to switch to his spare Gresini Honda for a while after falling at Turn 2 only ten minutes into practice, but praised his team for getting his primary bike fixed by the end of the session.

"I felt comfortable from the first lap but we are struggling a little bit for grip at full lean, as you could see from the crash," he said.

"The guys did a great job fixing up my number one bike whilst I did some laps on the second one and I was able to go back out on it at the end to improve my lap time even more.

"The good thing is we are on the pace but we still haven't found the limit yet and there is room for more improvement tomorrow."

Team boss Fausto Gresini was impressed that de Angelis had not let the crash knock him off his stride.

"Alex has started out strongly again and it is great to see," he said. "Once more he is showing everybody his talent and proving that he has the ability to stick the pace with the very best riders in the world.

"It was a shame about the crash but the important thing was that he didn't lose confidence, came back strongly and the team did a fantastic job with the bike."

De Angelis' team-mate Toni Elias was only 12th fastest today, a second adrift of the Italian's times.

"I'm not happy because once again we've started out on a Friday with a base setting that I am not comfortable with," Elias said.

"Basically this is quite an unusual circuit and it requires a specific kind of set-up, but we got it wrong today. However, this is not an unusual situation for us after the first practice session and I have full confidence in myself and the team that we can find a way forward."