Kuala Lumpur, 20 October: Honda LCR rider Carlos Checa refuses to give up despite a frustrating qualifying performance in advance of tomorrow’s Malaysian Grand Prix at the Sepang Circuit. Checa will start sixteenth on the grid after failing to find a faster and more comfortable set-up for his Honda RC212V in today’s sunny and humid conditions.

In the morning free practice session Checa improved his times by 0.7s on race tyres, but his qualifying runs were slowed by severe chatter and a continuing lack of front-end grip. In advance of tomorrow’s 21 lap race Checa and crew chief Ramon Forcada will make a detailed analysis of computer data in the search for answers. Pole posItion was claimed by fellow Spaniard Dani Pedrosa.

CHECA: Sixteenth - 2’03.525

CHECA: “It is not normal that I am almost 1.5 seconds slower than my times from pre-season testing here, especially as we now have the updated chassis and engine parts from Honda. Nothing we tried seemed to work and on the qualifying tyres I had a big problem with chatter and the front-end jumping around, the bike would not turn. But we will not give up and continue to try 100%. I will work with Ramon, examine the data, and see what we can try in the warm-up to improve the performance.”

In qualifying for the 250cc Grand Prix Eugene Laverty will start from the fifth row after making a strong comeback from a harmless crash in the morning free practice session. He improved his previous best time by 1.7s.

LAVERTY: “Considering I lost about 30 minutes this morning with the crash I’m very happy with my progress, I’m only 0.4s away from 13th on the grid. We have made a big improvement to front grip and braking stability.”