Spaniard goes from sixteenth to sixth in first third of German round.
Toni Eliás’ efforts in the Alice Motorrad Grand Prix Deutschland went almost unnoticed as the action heated up at the front of the race, but by the end of the thirty laps he had put in a performance as impressive as anything that was occurring in the fight for the win.
The Spaniard had crashed in qualifying for the Sachsenring race, and was unable to clock a time that would give him anything higher than the last spot on the grid. That was in the wet, and with a dry track on Sunday Elías was able to overtake nine riders in the opening ten laps to turn his situation around.
”I was expecting a fight for a top ten finish, to be honest,” revealed the surprised San Carlo Honda Gresini rider, who came up through the field for sixth place. “I ended up doing much better than I could have imagined!”
Adding to the steep difficulty level of the race was the fact that Elías had been ill in the days prior to the race, in addition to the toughness of rival Marco Melandri. Both these factors coincided in a nervous moment for the Spanish star.
“Once I caught up with Marco I found it difficult to get past him and my stomach pains started,” he continued. “I thought, ‘please no, not now!’ I fought through the pain and over the last few laps we had a great battle, which I was able to win. I want to thank the team because they’ve been doing a great job and we are starting to see the fruit of our hard work.”
Elías is currently twelfth in the overall classification, level on points with teammate Alex de Angelis.
*motogp.com
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