SEVEN TIME World Champion Valentino Rossi put in another valuable day’s work in Le Mans yesterday
during the final stint of the two-day MotoGP tests.
Sunday’s race winner completed
44 laps and set a best time of 1m 33.882. With just four riders testing
today, it was a quiet day on track and Rossi and his crew made the most of the
relaxed environment to continue testing tyres with Bridgestone and to try out
some new settings for the M1. The Italian’s best time was set on race tyres and
was an impressive 0.333 seconds quicker than the fastest lap in Sunday’s
race, set by Rossi himself on his way to a memorable 90th career victory.
Rossi said: “It was a nice quiet day on track today and it was good to have
the chance to work in such a relaxed atmosphere, without so many other riders
around. We finished quite early but we managed to get a lot of important
work done, both on tyres with Bridgestone and on the general set-up of our bike
with the next few races in mind. We tested more different tyres and also made
some experiments with different settings, trying to collect as much
information as possible to help us to continue to improve.”
Not so impressive was Ducati's Marci Melandri, who posted a time five seconds off Rossi's best. Insiders say that judging on this year's performance it's unlikely Melandri will continue with Ducati in 2009.
Day 2 Test Times
1.
Valentino Rossi (ITA) Fiat Yamaha Team
1'33.882
2.
Casey Stoner (AUS) Ducati Marlboro
1'34.068
3.
Erwan Nigon (FRA) HRC Test Team
1'36.341
4.
Marco Melandri (ITA) Ducati Marlboro
1'38.536
