Spain GP (Jerez)
First day
 Gauloises
Yamaha Team riders Valentino Rossi and Colin Edwards used
the first day of practice for the season-opening Spanish Grand
Prix to continue working on the setting of their YZR-M1 machines
on a cool and cloudy day at Jerez today. A new practice format,
which includes just one qualifying session on the eve of the
race, meant that the riders and engineers were able to work
without qualifying pressure and focus all their efforts on
preparing for Sunday’s 2005 curtain raiser at the Andalusian
circuit. The Gauloises Yamaha Team riders were quickly on
the pace this morning, picking up from three days of IRTA
tests at this circuit just over a week ago to lap comfortably
inside the top five quickest times. However, cooler track
conditions in the afternoon meant that both riders were unable
to improve their times in the second session as they experimented
with different set-up configurations.
Sete Gibernau (Honda), the only man to lap quicker than Rossi
in the morning, also failed to improve in the afternoon but
his lap of 1’40.800 remained untouched and the Spaniard
leads the timesheets overnight. With a time just 0.086 behind
Gibernau in the morning, Rossi stayed firm in second place
but his team-mate Edwards dropped to eighth after Nicky Hayden
(Honda), John Hopkins (Suzuki), Marco Melandri (Honda), Max
Biaggi (Honda) and Shinya Nakano (Kawasaki) all improved.
The riders will have one more free practice on Saturday morning
before the eagerly-anticipated single qualifying session in
the afternoon, when Valentino Rossi will look to repeat his
pole position from last season.
VALENTINO ROSSI – (1’40.886, 30 laps)
"This morning was good but this afternoon it was more
difficult, we had a few problems, so I’m not entirely
happy. We made some changes to the settings to try and improve
the situation but it seemed to get more difficult to improve
my time! However, there was no qualifying today so Friday’s
lap time is not as important as it used to be. Our objective
today was to work on the setting of the bike and that is what
we have done. Tomorrow we will keep going and make some changes
to the suspension to find a better feeling with the front
end of the bike.”
 COLIN
EDWARDS (1’41.556, 38 laps)
"We did a good job this morning, using basically the
same setting we found here over the three days of tests. People
might wonder why we would change that in the afternoon but
the track conditions were quite different today – with
cooler temperatures and a bit of grime on the surface. We
had an idea that we thought would improve the overall performance
of the bike but unfortunately that didn’t turn out to
be the case and in hindsight it was probably too big a step.
The good thing is that we know what we have to do tomorrow.
The new practice format is really cool – we’ve
been able to work calmly today and I think it’s going
to be a lot of fun once qualifying gets going tomorrow afternoon."
DAVIDE BRIVIO – TEAM DIRECTOR
“Today was the first day for us with the new practice
format and we found it to be much better. We were able to
continue our work from the tests here and work towards finding
a race setting for the bike without worrying about a hot lap.
It was useful for both riders and their lap times weren’t
bad, although neither of them has got the settings of their
bike 100% yet. Tonight we have to check over the data and
we’ll see if we can improve things in the morning. We
have plenty to do but it’s only Friday so we’re
definitely not worried!”
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