Valentino Rossi finally got his factory Yamaha working as he wanted around the Jerez circuit, one day after finishing a close third in Sunday's Spanish Grand Prix.
The reigning seven time MotoGP champion beat his best race lap by a quarter of a second to finish the test day in second place, 0.055sec behind Honda's Dani Pedrosa and 0.026sec ahead of Fiat Yamaha team-mate Jorge Lorenzo - winner of Sunday's race.
Rossi also tried a new engine evolution, aimed at improving acceleration, and reported a small improvement. The Italian had one upset during the day when he had a low-speed crash at turn two, luckily causing no further damage to his recovering shoulder.
"We improved our race setting a bit and found better stability and grip, so we arrived at the right place finally, even if we were too late for the race!” he admitted. “We tried a new front tyre for Bridgestone, which was good and also a slightly different engine from Japan, trying to improve the acceleration.
“The difference was small but important, although we don't know yet when we will be able to use it in a race,” he continued. “My lap times were fast and apart from the small crash, when I just put a bit too much lean on and lost the front, it was a good day.
“I was only doing 65 km/h so luckily it wasn't a problem. Now we have a long rest and I want to fully recover so I'm back to full strength in Le Mans,” Rossi concluded.
"The first important thing was to try to improve the setting of the weekend and understand where we went wrong, and this was more or less successful,” said team manager Davide Brivio. “Then we tried some different electronic maps and a new front Bridgestone which was very promising.
“Finally we tested a slightly different engine; a developed model that we may not see soon but our feedback will be very valuable for Yamaha in their future work. An important day's work."
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