Marco Melandri´s point scoring endeavours turned into top five form in China

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After a slow start to his Ducati Marlboro adventure Marco Melandri´s consistent point scoring endeavours turned into top five form in China.

Surely one of the happiest men leaving the Shanghai paddock on Sunday evening would have been Marco Melandri, who for the first time looked competitive on the Ducati Marlboro Desmosedici GP8 this weekend, as he ran from twelfth on the grid to finish fifth at the Pramac Grand Prix of China.

`It was such a good race for me,´ said Melandri to motogp.com. `All the weekend it has been pretty tough because we have been working a lot and struggling a little bit. But we knew yesterday that we could find a better feeling with the bike and we could have a good race but I didn´t really know how good it could be.´

`I had a good start and then there was a hard battle at the beginning so I lost a bit of time,´ continued the Italian, `but after that I found my rhythm and I was able to overtake many riders. I was looking to overtake my team-mate but after the halfway point I slowed down a bit and he improved his lap times. Then Jorge Lorenzo passed me, I tried to fight with him but he was a bit faster and in the end I made a few mistakes so I think fifth is the best we could do.´

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Finally looking competitive on the Desmosedici GP8 last weekend in China, Marco Melandri believes his Ducati adventure is finally about to begin in earnest.



Following a rather modest start to the season with Ducati Marlboro, Marco Melandri was a happy man after rediscovering his pace at the Pramac Grand Prix of China, so his latest blog update on his official website made for interesting reading this week.

Until Sunday the Italian star had not featured in the top ten in 2008 and he feels that his Chinese result could be the key to finally fulfilling his potential with his new team.

`I´m happy again, because even though fifth place in China wasn´t a victory it was really important for me. After a long winter I´ve rediscovered the pleasure in riding,´ revealed the 25 year-old.
`I enjoyed it in China because I felt good on the bike,´ he continued. `I had some good battles and I went faster than before. I still don´t feel like I´m going at 100% but I finally feel like I´m getting somewhere with Ducati.´

`Up until now it´s felt like I have been hitting against a brick wall, looking for the way to start enjoying what should be a new adventure in my career without any joy. Now I´ve opened the door and I´m sure I can start enjoying it.´

With MotoGP´s return to Shanghai still an open question, Melandri appraised the circuit, saying, `The track is good fun and has the longest straight on the calendar, so one day I´ll be able to tell my grandchildren about riding at 342 km/h on a motorbike, which is still hard to believe I did!´

`Before the question comes round again about top speeds, with everyone asking `does the track still look that wide when you are going so fast?´, my answer was simply, ‘the track is always the same width (12 m) and that´s how you see it, but it´s just that it goes by so fast!´

`In fact not having a speedometer you´re not really conscious of how fast you are going because the run-off areas are really wide and you lose your reference points on the walls at trackside simply because you are going so quickly. It is not really an optical illusion that the track is narrower, it´s just that you are concentrating solely on what is in front of you, so you don´t look around, so perhaps you start to think it is getting tighter.´