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Fabrizio Pleased With Recovery after Superpole Slip-up

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Michel Fabrizio was satisfied two strong points finishes at Assen, but admitted he had missed an opportunity for an even greater result at Assen.

Elimination in Superpole 1 left the Italian down in thirteenth on the grid, but strong recoveries in both races saw him emerge with 20 points from the weekend.

In the day's first race, won by Jonathan Rea, Fabrizio made a slow start but made swift progress through the field, overtaking Eugene Laverty for fourth just after half distance.

And despite losing out to the other factory Yamaha, ridden by Marco Melandri, Fabrizio was still happy with the performance of the Suzuki GSX-R1000.

“Generally I am quite pleased with our performance today – especially considering that I had to start from the fourth row of the grid. I didn’t make a good start in the first race, but managed to get into fourth by lap 12. It had taken some time to get past some of the riders, but I was fairly comfortable in fourth until a few laps from the end. My front tyre was already moving about a lot by the time Melandri came past and although I tried to catch him again, the tyre wasn’t up to it; so I had to be satisfied with fifth instead.”

Race two saw the Alstare Suzuki rider make similar progress into the top ten but the tyre problems that hindered him earlier struck again, preventing him from getting any higher than seventh.

“I used the same tyres (soft front and rear) for race two, but this time, they began to go off after only six laps”, he explained. “From then it was a real struggle to push hard enough to catch and pass Haslam and Laverty, but I kept trying right to end of the race. At the finish, I was just one tenth-of-a-second behind Laverty, so it was pretty close.

The Italian left the Netherlands with a feeling of frustration, admitting that the problems in Superpole cost him the chance to race with the leaders.

“Although today was quite a good day for us, it would’ve been so much better if I had not have had the problem in Superpole yesterday. I am convinced that if I had been on the first or second row of the grid today, I would’ve got on the podium for sure – and maybe have even won a race!”

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