Qatar test Day 2: Fifth place
Rossi comes fifth in testing at Losail, Qatar, with a time of 1m 55.947s. Suzuki’s Maverick Vinales leads with 1m 55.436s.
The second day was OK, I worked a lot and did a lot of laps because we have quite a lot of work to do. In the end my performance was not fantastic in the lap and the position because I‘m a little bit worse compared to yesterday, but in reality we didn‘t do a real time attack because we tried to save some tyres because it‘s important for tomorrow. We don‘t have a lot of tyres, so we’re trying to manage. I think Friday will be very important for trying to understand our potential in a better way and especially for trying to improve the lap time and also for making a long run and try to understand our pace.
Qatar test Day 1: Third place
Rossi’s Qatar MotoGP test gets off to a bad start when he falls on his out lap. He recovers and finishes in third place, 0.442s behind Jorge Lorenzo and 0.014s from Suzuki’s Maverick Vinales.
I started in a bad way, because after ten corners I crashed. I wasn’t very fast, but maybe because I had too much angle and the rear slid. But fortunately it was just a small slide at 70 km/h. It wasn’t a big problem but to start like this wasn’t fantastic… After, we jumped on the other bike and I’m quite satisfied about today because, also here in Qatar, it looks like our bike is competitive. We can be strong and fast and this is the most important thing, because it’s already the third track where the Yamaha is competitive. We also started with a good base set-up, in fact I didn’t work a lot on it. I felt good from the first moment, rode quite fast and I was able to consistently improve my lap times and in the end I’m in the third position, so it was a good day.