Rossi makes tentative start to title quest in Valencia
Camel Yamaha Team rider Valentino Rossi today began preparations
for the race that will decide the destiny of the MotoGP World
Championship title as the first free practice sessions took
place at Valencia. Fans have already begun to stream into
the Ricardo Tormo circuit to witness the first exchanges of
what promises to be another historic chapter in this sport's
great history, with bright sunshine and warm autumn temperatures
of 25ºC welcoming them to the eastern coast of Spain
for the final round of the season.
In the morning session Rossi and his Camel Yamaha team-mate
Colin Edwards helped raise the heat with a series of quick
laps that left the Italian on top of the time sheets, with
the American sixth fastest, over lunch. However, the pace
picked up considerably in the afternoon as a number of riders
tested out their qualifying rubber ahead of tomorrow afternoon's
grid decider and the pair slipped down the order, with Rossi
ending the day seventh fastest overall and Edwards, who was
unable to improve on his best lap from the morning, down in
eleventh.
Loris Capirossi (Ducati) clocked the fastest time of the
day with a lap of 1'32.220, ahead of Randy de Puniet (Kawasaki)
and Chris Vermeulen (Suzuki). Rossi and Edwards will look
to close the gap as they work on further setting refinements
to their YZR-M1 machines in the final free practice session
tomorrow morning, before official qualifying gets underway
at 2pm local time.
Valentino Rossi (7th - 1'33.274; 51 laps)
"We found a good setting this morning and we were quite
fast from the start, but this afternoon some of the others
made big improvements and caught up with us! This afternoon
we tried a lot of different things and quite a few tyres,
trying to find the best possible package for tomorrow and
Sunday. Tyres are fundamental here and its very hard on the
left side of the tyre especially. This track isn't so easy
and it takes time to find the right setting, but the feeling
from the bike is good and in general our race pace is quite
fast so we're not really worried. We've got one or two things
to improve, especially in a couple of the hard braking areas,
but I think if we can make just a couple of improvements then
we will be able to fight at the top. For now we will stay
calm and focused and tomorrow things will be clearer."
Colin Edwards (11th - 1'33.545; 39 laps)
"It's okay, everything is under control! Our new breakthrough,
'miracle' setting that we found in Motegi needed a few tweaks
before it was perfect for Estoril and here it's the same story.
In fact we need to make a few small changes back towards the
Motegi setting in order to have it perfect for this track.
Everything we're learning and understanding here, especially
with the setting, is going to be really valuable next year,
even with the new bike, so that's quite exciting. We understand
why it was perfect in Portugal and why we've got some problems
here, so there's no need to panic. We'll make some changes
tonight and I'm confident that we'll be back up there tomorrow."
Davide Brivio - Camel Yamaha Team Director
"With Valentino we worked a lot today on many different
things. We're still trying to fine tune the setting and select
the right tyres but anyway the situation is not so bad. Colin
this morning was quite fast but now we need to look at what
happened this afternoon because he couldn't improve on that
time. We've got some work to get through tonight to see how
we can improve with him but it seems his team understands
what they need to do and I am sure they will be able to bring
everything together for tomorrow. It's not a perfect start
but we're relaxed, it's only Friday and we have all of Saturday
to improve."
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