One day after stunning his rivals with a dominant victory in the Spanish MotoGP, Valentino Rossi returned to Jerez for a day of testing.
Perhaps due to the post-race celebrations the Italian was the last of the 19 riders to take to the track, a little after 3pm, but went on to complete 52 laps - almost a double race distance.
Rossi spent the time trying the new Michelin front tyres with the rear fuel tank concept also making a return. However, once again, Rossi and team-mate Jorge Lorenzo preferred the conventional version.
“We tried the bike more in the 2016 version with a different fuel tank. I felt better with the standard fuel tank so I think we'll continue with the normal one,” said Rossi.
The Doctor is third in the world championship and 24 points from Marc Marquez, who set the pace at Monday's test. Rossi's best lap put him fourth on the timesheets, but only 0.319s from the Honda rider.
“We didn't have a lot of things to test today, just some small details. [Apart from the fuel tank] we tried three different front tyres, and we found something good; that was the most important thing.”
Lorenzo, who lost out to Rossi by 2.386s in Sunday's race, found a slightly better set-up on his way to a lap time just 0.019s from Marquez.
“Especially important for us is that we tried a different setting to turn better on the corners and I think we made quite a big improvement,” said the 2017 Ducati rider.
Team director Massimo Meregalli stated that both M1 riders preferred the same Michelin tyre and confirmed that the rear fuel tank concept will not be raced in the near future.
The main objective for us today was to test the three front tyres, which we were able to do successfully. It was good to discover that both riders felt the benefit from the same tyre. This is encouraging as it really shows Michelin is working hard in the right direction to give as much confidence and performance as possible to the riders.
“We were also able to make a further test with the rear fuel tank compared with the conventional one and were able to decide that we will continue with the conventional. Jorge reconfirmed a configuration of exhaust pipe and we were finally able to make some back-to-back tests with different electronic and chassis settings to complete the day.
“Now we are saying farewell to Jerez and taking our confidence from yesterday's brilliant results on to our next challenge.”
