Marco Simoncelli delighted by Qatar performance

Honda insurance customers can expect big things from Marco Simoncelli in the MotoGP championship this year.

Although he is riding for the San Carlo Gresini Honda satellite team, the Italian rider is riding a bike that is effectively the same as the Repsol Honda machines.

This pace showed on Sunday at the Qatar Grand Prix, where the rider finished in fifth and managed to maintain a battle with Andrea Dovizioso on the Repsol bike until the end.

With such a positive first race of the season, Simoncelli is excited about the rest of the 2011 campaign.

"It was great to see the others so close up and I am sure this was my best race – maybe not the result but in terms of my consistency and the distance to the race winner," he said.

Simoncelli pulled one particularly robust passing move on Dovizioso, with the two riders touching in the corner, which the latter described as "on the limit" of acceptable racing.

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