ROUND 1 – SPANISH GP – JEREZ PRACTICE
ROSSI MAKES PERFECT START AT JEREZ
Camel Yamaha Team rider Valentino Rossi kicked off his MotoGP
World Championship defence in fine style today, setting the
fastest lap time in the first free practice sessions for the
opening round of the 2006 season at Jerez. After light rain
showers hit the track this morning, when Rossi decided not
to ride and his team-mate Colin Edwards put in just two laps,
both riders were able to work without interruption in the
afternoon as they aimed to iron out set-up difficulties encountered
in recent pre-season tests at this circuit.
Whilst Rossi was able to overcome the majority of his problems,
immediately finding the right direction to work with the team’s
engineers and technicians, Edwards suffered a minor setback
today but he is confident that he can recover lost ground
in tomorrow morning’s final free practice before the
crucial afternoon qualifying session. The American clocked
the seventh fastest time today as Loris Capirossi (Ducati)
produced the strongest challenge to Rossi’s dominance,
lapping 0.012 seconds slower than his Italian compatriot.
VALENTINO ROSSI (1’41.613, 19 laps)
"We haven’t fixed everything just yet but the Yamaha
engineers came up with a few ideas to solve the vibrations
we suffered during the test and they all worked. So far we
have come up with a setting that allows me to ride in a better
way to control the bike and, even though we still have some
small vibrations, it still gives us less problems. This is
the perfect way to start the season and I am really happy
with the way the team have worked. This afternoon the track
conditions were still not perfect so the times weren’t
so fast, but I think tomorrow it will be better. Tomorrow
we have to keep working hard to come up with some more solutions
and I am sure we will be in good shape for the race. There
is already a good atmosphere and I can’t wait until
Sunday!”
COLIN EDWARDS (1’42.266, 28 laps)
"To be honest things didn’t go as we
would have wished today. After losing an hour this morning
because of the weather we missed out on another 45 minutes
in the afternoon. I felt something was wrong but it took a
long time for us to work it out. Basically there was too much
pressure in the tyre and once we realised that we were able
to start working properly – unfortunately it was a bit
too late to be reflected in the lap times. Looking across
the garage we can see that the engineers have got some really
good data that will definitely help us tomorrow to refine
the set-up and sort out some of the problems we had in the
test. It will be two important hours but I have full confidence
in the job the team is doing.”
DAVIDE BRIVIO – CAMEL YAMAHA TEAM DIRECTOR
“It looks like we are making improvements
and moving in the right direction, which is very encouraging
at this early stage of the weekend. We lost this morning’s
session to the weather but I have to say that the engineers
and the technicians made the most of the available time to
make the first adjustments to the bikes. Both riders have
done a different job today, and our team has great cooperation
between the two sides of the garage so now we can put all
this information together and find the best way forward for
both riders tomorrow morning. Hopefully the bad weather is
now out of the way for the rest of the weekend
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