"Having a more powerful front brake has allowed me to improve my lap time" - Alex de Angelis.

MotoGP rookie Alex de Angelis, who crashed out of Sunday's Catalan Grand Prix after a collision with Loris Capirossi, will have the use of more powerful brakes from the next event at Donington Park onwards.

de Angelis was the talk of the MotoGP paddock after an amazing charge to fourth in the Italian Grand Prix, but then tarnished his reputation with what appears to have been an over-optimistic move to pass Capirossi at Catalunya - which left the Suzuki rider with a hand injury.

"We tried a new front brake today, one that Nissin brought here to Montmeló and we're satisfied with the results," said de Angelis, after setting the fifth fastest lap time at Catalunya on Monday. "Having a more powerful front brake has allowed me to improve my lap time so we'll fit it from the next GP in England.

"We've also worked a lot with Bridgestone, testing race and qualifying tyres, with the aim of confirming the changes we made at Mugello. I'm happy with how the day went because we confirmed that we would have had a good pace in the race.

"We'll obviously have to reconfirm everything at Donington because the temperatures will be much lower than here. We also tried some race starts, which was an area I was struggling with," added the San Marinese.

San Carlo Honda Gresini team-mate Shinya Nakano, ninth in Sunday's grand prix, set the third fastest lap time (also on a qualifying tyre) with a lap good enough to have placed him ninth on the grid.

"We did half a day of testing and worked mainly with Bridgestone," said the Japanese. "The track conditions were better than in the race having not rained overnight and I managed to improve my lap times by a few precious tenths. We also made a notable improvement on the qualifying tyres by around half a second. We also worked to adapt the bike more to my riding style and I tried to be smoother with it too, with the objective of improving tyre life. The results were satisfactory and I'm confident about the next race."