CAMEL YAMAHA TEAM RETURNS TO SEPANG FOR FINAL ‘WINTER’
TEST
Camel Yamaha Team riders Valentino Rossi and Colin Edwards
began their last three-day test in Sepang today, where they
rejoined the rest of the MotoGP grid at the popular Malaysian
venue. Fresh from their test in Qatar last week, Rossi and
Edwards concentrated on more valuable development work with
the 2006-spec YZR-M1, both finishing the day in the top five
on the unofficial time sheets.
Focusing almost entirely on ironing out the small vibration
problems they’ve been suffering from, fast lap times
were not the aim of the day for the Yamaha pair. Despite this
Rossi and Edwards were on the pace and well inside lap record
time. Edwards was third behind Marco Melandri (Honda, 2’01.66)
and Dani Pedrosa (Honda, 2’01.89) with a best lap of
2’02.00 from 54 laps whilst Rossi, who also completed
54 laps, was fifth with a time of 2’02.20.
 COLIN
EDWARDS (2’02.00, 54 Laps)
“It was seriously hot out there today and pretty exhausting!
Today we concentrated on fixing the little bit of chatter
we’ve had and played around with some front fork settings,
just trying to dial it in. We made some good progress and
we have a new front-end setting to try in the morning; we
hope that this will be the final key. Honestly we didn’t
really concentrate much on lap times but it seems that they
came anyway, so I’m pretty happy! The bike already feels
even better than it did here in January, the new stuff we
have from both Yamaha and Michelin is great and after Qatar
I am feeling really confident, especially with the front-end.
It’s all going well so hopefully we can make the final
steps we need over the next two days.”
 VALENTINO
ROSSI (2’02.20, 54 Laps)
“Today we worked almost entirely on trying to solve
the vibration problems that we have had. We changed many things,
tried various different settings and collected a lot of important
information throughout the day. Now we are looking forward
to using all this information over the next two days and we
are confident that we are close to fixing the problem. Once
we’ve been able to fix it, we will be able to use this
bike to its full potential. Yamaha has done a great job and
the potential of this bike is very high, it’s a big
improvement to last year’s M1 and I am sure that once
we’ve solved this one remaining issue, things will be
very good.”
DAVIDE BRIVIO – CAMEL YAMAHA TEAM DIRECTOR
“Of course fixing this vibration is now our main focus
and today we worked a lot with the entire team to try to find
the right way forward. We had great cooperation between the
two riders and both crews, exchanging information and experience
and this is very important for the team’s progress.
We’ve been working on data collection today and we will
continue tomorrow, trying some new things and gathering more
information to help us. We’ve already done many days
testing with this new bike and mostly it’s going very
well, now we have two more days here to continue with our
improvement. ”
Unofficial Lap Times:
Marco Melandri (ITA) Honda 2’01.66
Dani Pedrosa (SPA) Honda 2’01.89
COLIN EDWARDS (USA) Yamaha 2’02.00
John Hopkins (USA) Suzuki 2’02.15
VALENTINO ROSSI (ITA) Yamaha 2’02.20
Loris Capirossi (ITA) Ducati 2’02.64
Randy de Puniet (FRA) Kawasaki 2’02.75
Nicky Hayden (USA) Honda 2’02.86
9. Carlos Checa (SPA) Yamaha 2’03.40
9. Casey Stoner (AUS) Honda 2’03’40
Sete Gibernau (SPA) Ducati 2’03.51
Toni Elias (SPA) Honda 2’03.52
Kenny Roberts (USA) KR Honda 2’03.58
Makoto Tamada (JPN) Honda 2’03.66
Shinya Nakano (JPN) Kawasaki 2’04.02
Chris Vermeulen (AUS) Suzuki 1’04.10
Alex Hoffman (GER) Ducati 2’05.40
Jose Luis Cardosa (SPA) Ducati 2’05.81
James Ellison (GBR) Yamaha 2’05.90
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