After making another step up the all-time winners list to
joint second with his 90th career victory yesterday, Valentino Rossi wasted no
time in getting started on working towards number 91 at Le Mans today. It was
the first of two days of testing for Rossi, who was the sole occupant of the
Fiat Yamaha Team garage as team-mate Jorge Lorenzo flew back to Spain after his
hard-fought second yesterday to continue rehabilitation on his fractured
ankles.
Yamaha is flying high after filling the podium yesterday but
there is still ongoing development work for the team, with Rossi focusing
largely on tyre testing for the future with Bridgestone today as well as
refining the set-up of his M1. Most of the paddock stayed on to test and Rossi
was second fastest today after 68 laps with a best lap of 1’33.661, set on a
qualifying tyre.
The Italian is keen to head to his home race at Mugello
next week in the best possible shape and will therefore continue testing
tomorrow, when he will have the track almost to himself with most teams are
packing up tonight.
Rossi:
“Today was a good day, even if it was quite hard to get back
to work after the great day we had yesterday! We tested many different tyres
with Bridgestone, both qualifiers and race tyres, and collected a lot of
information. The tyres we tested today were mostly for the future development,
not so much for the next few races, but it’s very important to look ahead like
this and we found some good material. Of course we worked on the setting a bit
as well and also tested some new electronic maps, and now we will continue with
more tyre testing again tomorrow. Our aim for this test is just to make sure the
bike is in the best possible shape for the Italian challenge that is waiting
around the corner!”
