Melandri: Bridgestone must improve

The Gresini Honda rider had been fastest on the first two days of this weekend's official test, despite crashing on Saturday afternoon, but he said that he had expected to struggle in qualifying trim.

"We knew we had difficulties especially with the qualifying tyres rather than with the race tyres," said Melandri in an interview with television station Italia1.

"Yesterday with the qualifying tyres I did a lap (only) one tenth faster than the Michelin riders on race tyres, so we knew it would be very hard.

"But it's also true that the first Bridgestone rider (fifth placed Randy de Puniet) was 1.5 seconds slower than the best time, so that means there's a lot of work to do.

"I didn't have a good feeling, and to push hard and to take risks just to gain a couple of tenths when you're two seconds slower doesn't make sense. I had already had a stupid fall yesterday, so I didn't want to repeat that mistake."

Ducati's Loris Capirossi echoed Melandri's opinion about the Bridgestone qualifiers.

"We know we have a bit of a problem on qualifying tyres," Capirossi told Italia1. 

"We had some difficulties in previous tests, but Bridgestone is working to try to solve them.

"The important thing for us is that this morning we finally managed to have a more competitive bike on race tyres. We are fairly fast, almost like the best, so this is the most satisfying thing."

Despite his pace on Friday and Saturday, Melandri feels that his team still have a lot of work to do.

"Now we must improve the race set-up," he said.

"We easily get to (one minute) 41.5 but after that it's like having a wall in front of us: to improve by one tenth we end up finding ourselves half a second behind.

"Now we hope we'll get the new Bridgestone material as soon as possible and that Honda help us solving the problems with the power output in a way that can help us having the tyre work in a consistent manner throughout the race, which is something we miss now."

"There's a lot of work to do. The customer Hondas are struggling a bit at the moment, but with (works rider) Dani Pedrosa's bike going really quick we hope we'll get some new stuff as well."

Melandri also hopes that a brand new Bridgestone tyre to be introduced at the Qatar season-opener might make a difference.

"At the first race we'll start with an untested tyre, because I've found good characteristics in various tyres, so it will be a bit of a surprise," he said.

"Let's hope it'll go well. Unfortunately Bridgestone wasn't able to take them here, but we'll have them there."