Melandri keen to watch works Hondas

Honda have admitted that they are putting all of their focus into the works machines of Nicky Hayden and Dani Pedrosa at the moment, which means that Melandri will not be racing with any new parts this weekend.

The Italian believes that his Gresini team will have to work hard to get on the podium in France, and he admitted that he is looking forward to seeing the influence of the new parts on the works bikes.

"We will have no new parts this weekend, but the HRC bikes will have some," said Melandri. "I'm excited to see how their bikes go."

While Melandri has already expressed his disappointment about not getting enough help from Honda, he acknowledged that the Japanese factory was doing all it could to get back on the pace.

"Everyone is working so hard because they know they have to improve the bike," he added. "At the moment no Honda rider has won a race, but they want to win, and I want to win as well."

The Honda riders have complained about a lack of power so far this year, but Melandri is not expecting a change in fortunes around the tight Le Mans Bugatti circuit.

"The track is strange, we have so many tight corners," he said. "For our bike it is pretty difficult because we are working to improve the power delivery.

"We have some problems opening the throttle out of slow corners, so we have to be very focused in practice, and we cannot make mistakes if we want to be at the front.

"We still have quite far to go to get a good result, but if we improve a little bit we can be not so far from the podium."