ROSSI AND EDWARDS ON THE PACE AT MOTEGI
 Camel
Yamaha Team racers Valentino Rossi and Colin Edwards began
their preparations for the Grand Prix of Japan in ideal fashion
today, lapping at the top end of the time sheets throughout
both free practice sessions and ending the day with the first
and fourth fastest laps overall. Both riders were able to
work on their race setting, adapting the machine configuration
from the fast and flowing demands of Phillip Island to the
stop-start nature of Motegi, before fitting a softer compound
rear tyre in a trial run ahead of tomorrow’s crucial
qualifying practice.
Rossi was on the pace in both instances, running second fastest
in the morning free practice and stepping up the tempo with
a string of fast and consistent laps in the afternoon. His
best time on a race tyre of 1’48.044 was just a fraction
outside lap record pace and is a positive reflection of his
potential in Sunday’s race. Edwards, meanwhile, was
delighted to follow up his positive progress in Australia
with another impressive practice showing. The Texan topped
the timing screens for lengthy spells in the afternoon as
he also lapped in the low 1’48s before settling for
the fourth fastest time overall as other riders also experimented
with a qualifying tyre.
VALENTINO ROSSI (1st – 1’46.981; 44 laps)
“I am very happy with today; we’ve made a really
good start. The track has a good grip and also Michelin have
made great progress since this race last year, especially
with the front tyre. They have a new front tyre here which
gives me much better grip when braking and so I was able to
ride the bike at the maximum straight away today, which meant
that I had great fun! My pace is okay, although there are
many riders with a similar rhythm so I think it’s going
to be a hard battle on Sunday! My best time today was done
with the qualifying tyre and once again my bike worked perfectly
in this situation, so this is good news for tomorrow. Colin
was fast too today, as he was last weekend, which shows what
good work we’ve done on our M1 over the last few races.
This race is very important for the championship so it’s
nice to start off on the right foot with this good result.
Now we wait to see if we can continue in this way tomorrow.”
 COLIN
EDWARDS (4th – 1’47.581; 41 laps)
“We found something in Phillip Island which seems to
have made all the difference; we pulled the bike out this
morning and it felt good straight away. We’ve basically
just softened up the setting and it’s since felt like
a completely different bike. Obviously Motegi is a very different
track to Phillip Island but what we used today was pretty
much the same bike with virtually the same setting –
just a few modifications that we thought would help us here.
The crew have done a great job and we’ve still got another
day to work on improving the setting ahead of the race. We
used a qualifying tyre today, which we don’t usually
do on a Friday, and I was really pleased with the lap time.
Now we have to keep going, make sure we don’t take a
single step backwards and head into Sunday’s race with
confidence of a top result.”
DAVIDE BRIVIO – CAMEL YAMAHA TEAM DIRECTOR
“For a start we are very happy to see Colin on top,
more or less throughout the whole session today, so we have
to keep going with him – improving his feeling with
the bike and continuing to give him a good package to work
with. Valentino has also made a good start and it is always
an advantage when both riders feel comfortable from the first
moment because they can push hard and give you lots of valuable
data to work from. It means that we have a good setting now
on both bikes so even if it rains tomorrow, as they say it
might, we can be confident for Sunday. As far as using the
qualifying tyre in free practice is concerned, we had actually
already started to do this before Malaysia, to provide some
information for the qualifying session on Saturday afternoon.
However, I don’t think there is any doubt that it is
in the back of teams’ minds now to set a good lap time,
just in case there is a similar situation with the weather
to the one we had at Sepang.”
|
