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Rossi makes promising start in Portugal, Edwards struggles in
thirteenth
Valentino Rossi
Valentino Rossi was quick to put his recent disappointments behind him
today,
finding a good pace early on in Estoril and finishing the first day
third in the
combined standings. Rossi has an excellent record at the Portuguese
track, having
finished on the podium in all seven of his premier-class visits here,
and he was
quick to make the most of his experience to find a good base setting for
his M1.
Colin Edwards had a more difficult day and finished 13th in the combined
standings, which were topped by Casey Stoner.
A sunny and warm morning's practice saw both Valentino and Colin lapping
consistently in the top four places, finishing the session second and
fourth
respectively. This afternoon the good weather continued and Rossi put in
some
steady progress, improving slightly on his time and finishing only 0.170
behind
Stoner, with second place filled by Yamaha Tech 3 rider Makoto Tamada.
Edwards
meanwhile ran into problems after his promising start and was unable to
improve on
his time from this morning, finishing 0.727 second down in 13th.
Valentino Rossi - Position: 3rdTime: 1'38.120Laps: 55
"Today I am quite happy because we've made some improvements to the new
engine and
it's going well for us, plus the new tyres that we found at the last
test are also
working quite well. We have a few small problems to fix, but I was able
to ride a
lot better today; I was quite fast from the start and we did some good
work to
find the right setting. Also this afternoon Tamada used a qualifying
tyre so in
reality we were second fastest on race tyres and quite close to Stoner;
this is a
good result. The bike is not so bad and it feels like we've made a good
step
forward. At the moment we need to think about the second part of the
race, because
this is where we expect more problems, but tomorrow the condition of the
asphalt
should be improved so hopefully this will also help our tyre
performance."
Colin Edwards
Colin Edwards - Position: 13thTime: 1'38.677Laps: 50
"This morning things were quite good, definitely not perfect but we
didn't make a
bad start. We had an idea about where we wanted to go this afternoon but
unfortunately it didn't work out and we found ourselves in a worse
position. I was
lacking in traction and felt like I couldn't make the bike go where I
wanted to
go, which was pretty frustrating. We lost some time this afternoon but
we'll have
a good look at all the data tonight and go back towards this morning's
setting
tomorrow and see how it goes. I'm confident that we can find the right
way so
we're in a position to fight for a good grid spot tomorrow."
Davide Brivio - Team Director
"Today was positive for Valentino but more difficult for Colin. With
Valentino
we're continuing to use the new engine, we have found some positive
things with it
and it's working well. Plus the new tyres we have here are an
improvement for us.
We can see that Valentino is already able to ride quite well and his
pace is close
to the top so we will keep working in the same direction. With Colin we
have some
more work to do and we have to check very carefully tonight the
information we
gathered today in order to find a better set-up for him tomorrow. We
know he can
improve because this morning he was quite fast, so we need to go back in
that
direction tomorrow."
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