Montiron: Makoto is back!

After a forgettable start to the 2005 season, Makoto Tamada looked back to his race winning bets at Barcelona today, ending the opening pair of free practice sessions in second overall - and just 0.091secs from pace setter Marco Melandri.

Tamada had been just fifteenth in the morning session, but found 1.498secs in the afternoon as his Konica Minolta Honda Team 'partially solved' the rear end chatter which had hampered the Japanese rider last weekend at Mugello.

"Makoto is back!" grinned team manager Luca Montiron. "This is what everybody was waiting for. To miss three races and then come back is never easy, and it is always tough to get the right confidence back to get close to the protagonists.

"If we check the times registered by Makoto today, we can see that he is only one of the few riders who have completed more than one lap under 1min and 44secs. Now we have to finalise the set up of the RC211V and the next two sessions will be very important to make another step forward.

"Makoto has to optimise the feeling with the tyres provided by Michelin and I believe this could represent the next step. I never stopped believing in the technical package at our disposal, in Makoto and in the team," he concluded.

Tamada himself would explain that he has finally returned to the 'right feeling' he had with his machine during pre-season testing - and is eager to repay his team for the faith they have in him.

"This afternoon I found back, after a long time, the right feeling on the bike which allowed me to constantly push the bike to the maximum," said the Japanese, who made his race return, following a broken wrist, at last weekend's Italian GP. "It was like it had been during winter testing, when everything was going in the right direction.

"I never lost the trust in my possibility to compete at a high level and finally the results are coming," he continued. "Tomorrow morning we have to define some more details on the bike to achieve a competitive qualifying time. If the weather remains similar I'm sure that I will be able to compete with the best. I owe a lot to my team, the time to pay off the hard work done in these months has arrived."