Guintoli takes sixth despite lacking TC

The Alice Ducati rider finished a season-best sixth at the Sachsenring despite the lack of electronic assistance on the very wet track.

He had been fast throughout practice but started at the back after a massive accident in the Saturday morning session left him out of sorts in qualifying.

"The weekend's been really good - quite up and down, with a really good practice and rhythm on Friday and Saturday morning, and then unfortunately on Saturday at the end of the session I had a big crash," Guintoli told the official MotoGP website.

"So in the afternoon I was a little bit dizzy and was in the fog, and I didn't manage to ride or qualify very well, so my position on the grid was bad.

"Then the race was really funny. On lap two my traction control went into failure so I had to turn it off, and I did the whole race without traction control. It was good fun - a lot of sport and a lot of sliding. It was a good weekend and a very good race."

Ducati team boss Livio Suppo was delighted with Guintoli's performance, which he believed proved that the satellite bikes could be competitive.

"Already this year we've been doing our best to make the Alice team improve," Suppo told Italia1 television.

"Last year we had already managed to get them to have the same tyres as the factory team. We believed that this year we would have made a step forward in the riders choice too, but unfortunately Toni (Elias) is in a bit of a crisis like Marco (Melandri).

"Of the three Sylvain is the least experienced one but he's the one doing best among them.

"We need to congratulate him, both him and our guys who do the engine, because from lap three onwards he had a traction control malfunction, so he did the entire race without it.

"So, with this engine rumoured to be unrideable without electronics, I must say he was really good. On top of that, riders do the difference even more in the wet, but the engine must have helped us too."

Guintoli was also grateful to Ducati for providing some upgrades for the Alice team in Germany.

"Thanks to Ducati, who brought some new evolutions here for us," he said. "They were all positive and we're going to carry on like that."