planetearth
There Can Be Only One
Number of posts : 3271
Registration date : 2007-02-03
 |  Subject: Rossi: It's going to be an exciting race.  Sat Mar 24, 2007 11:37 pm | |
| - Quote :
- After mixed free practice fortunes, former five-times MotoGP world champion Valentino Rossi found a jump in performance to qualify second on the grid at the Spanish Grand Prix - but the Italian still believes the closing stages of Sunday's race will be a step into the unknown.
After struggling for grip once again this morning and finishing the final free practice session way down in 18th, it was soon clear that the warmer afternoon temperatures favoured Rossi's Fiat Yamaha as he posted his fastest time of the weekend so far early in the qualifying hour.
With eight minutes to go Rossi then moved into pole position, with the first of his two Michelin qualifying tyres, only to be ousted by team-mate Colin Edwards less than a minute later as the Texan set his first flying lap. The last five minutes saw the usual flurry of quick laps and position-changing amongst the leading protagonists before Rossi took the top slot once again with a lap of 1min 39.453secs - before being pushed into second by Honda-mounted home hero Dani Pedrosa, who lapped just 0.051secs quicker than the Italian.
"It's been an up and down weekend for us so it's good that we've achieved our number one goal of getting onto the front row," said Rossi afterwards. "It's going to be very important for tomorrow's race I think. It was a good qualifying session and my lap was quite good, but we know it's possible to be a lot quicker because last month at the test I was more than one second faster! We knew it would be difficult to match the 1min 38.394secs I did then however, because then we had four qualifying tyres and with the new tyre restrictions now we only have two... Crash | |
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