planetearth
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Number of posts : 3271
Registration date : 2007-02-03
 |  Subject: Rossi: A good beginning.  Fri Mar 09, 2007 4:33 am | |
| - Quote :
- Having dominated all but the final season of 990cc racing, former five times champion Valentino Rossi then began the new 800cc era fastest of all at Qatar on Thursday.
During a perfect day for the newly announced Fiat Yamaha Team, Rossi and team-mate Colin Edwards put in a confident showing during practice around the Losail International Circuit - Edwards was fastest in the morning before Rossi, third this morning, took the afternoon session by storm, laying down a time of 1min 56.464secs that ultimately remained unchallenged to the end of the hour.
"It was a very good beginning for all of the team; it's a new season and we have a new sponsor and livery so it's good to start with both Colin and I at the top!" said Rossi. "We were in a good situation at the test here also but really the most important test was Jerez, because there we understood a lot more about our bike and we made some important changes. It seems here that the setting is very good and we were fast from the start this morning.
"I'm very happy with my Yamaha today, I can ride it well, I have a good rhythm and it's great fun to ride here in Qatar! For me, the new tyre rule is very good. Like this you know just what you have from the start, it's much more logical and there is less confusion for everyone. It means we can make decisions more quickly and I think, especially with a delicate bike like ours, that it's going to be helpful to have such a clear situation with tyres from the start of every weekend. Now let's see how we get on tomorrow and try to keep this rhythm going throughout the weekend."
Edwards finished the day second overall, just over three-tenths of a second behind his Italian team-mate.
"Today's gone pretty good, I think we can say we've made a strong start to the weekend," commented Colin. "After finding a great setting here at the test we made a few more changes in Jerez and made the bike even better. We started off today with the bike set-up pretty similar to Jerez, with just a few small changes, and it seemed to work well from the off. We had a little bit of an issue this morning with a tyre, but we compared notes with Valentino afterwards and sorted that out pretty quickly between us. It's the first day of the new tyre rules and it's a little bit scary to know that there's no longer an inexhaustible supply, but we just have to slightly adapt the way we work to accommodate it and I think it will work well in the long run. Here it could be more of an issue because the conditions can be quite changeable from day to day, but we'll keep our fingers crossed that we stay in the 'range' and save one of each of our best tyres for race day."
"This is a very good start to the season because both riders are feeling comfortable and finding it easy to keep a good pace. Now the most important matter is to make a good tyre choice, especially considering the new rules," added team director Davide Brivio. "It's definitely helped that we've tested here not long ago but we also made a lot of progress in Jerez and this has showed today. It's only Thursday of course and the race is a different matter, but it's nice for the team to be in first and second and we couldn't have hoped for a better start to the weekend."
Ducati's Casey Stoner was best of the rest in third.
Final free practice and qualifying takes place on Friday. Crash.net | |
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