Fiat Yamaha Team rider Valentino Rossi returned to one of his favourite race tracks today, as the 60th Dutch TT got started in bright sunshine at Assen. Rossi won the race from 11th on the grid last year, arguably his best performance of 2007, and the Italian is keen to emulate his success with another win on Saturday. He started well today by finishing the first day of free practice in second place, although he was 0.732 seconds off Casey Stoner and will be looking to improve on this tomorrow.
This morning saw Rossi in sixth position but some set-up alterations for the afternoon session brought about a good improvement in his lap times and the Italian was one of only three riders to lap under the 1’37 mark, the others being Stoner and Tech 3 Yamaha rider Colin Edwards. Rossi lapped consistently in the high 1’36s, already well under the circuit rec ord, but he will be aiming to shave a few more tenths off tomorrow in order to narrow the gap to Stoner. Rossi’s team-mate Jorge Lorenzo meanwhile finished the day 14th in the combined standings after a difficult day in which he struggled for front-end feeling.
Valentino RossiPosition: 2nd
Time: 1'38.819
Laps: 56
“Second place this afternoon is not bad at all, considering that this morning we had some problems. This afternoon we made some modifications and we started to improve quite a bit. We are still struggling in some points of the track however and this shows in the gap that we still have to Stoner. During this afternoon’s session we understood some interesting things, which we hope will help us tomorrow. Today, however, it seems like I am the leader of the ‘other’ championship!
Davide Brivio - Team Manager “This afternoon we made a good improvement to our setting compared to this morning, and our pace got better accordingly. Compared to the majority of the field in fact our pace is very good, the problem is Casey! In order to fight with him it’s clear that we’re going to need to work even harder and improve even more, so this is what we will do. It seems that we now have a good base setting so now we will just try to make the next step. The weather today has been fantastic – a nice change from recent races – so we hope for more of the same tomorrow so we can keep on improving.”
Ambient temperature: 22 degrees
Track temperature: 32 degrees
Humidity: 31%
Combined Free Practice Times 1. Casey Stoner (AUS) Ducati Marlboro 1'36.087
2. Valentino Rossi (ITA) Fiat Yamaha Team 1'36.8193. Colin Edwards (USA) Tech 3 Yamaha 1'36.931
4. Nicky Hayden (USA) Repsol Honda 1'37.012
5. Alex De Angelis (RSM) San Carlo Honda Gresini 1'37.126
6. Shinya Nakano (JPN) San Carlo Honda Gresini 1'37.137
7. Randy De Puniet (FRA) LCR Honda MotoGP 1'37.187
8. John Hopkins (USA) Kawasaki Racing 1'37.251
9. Dani Pedrosa (SPA) Repsol Honda 1'37.280
10. Chris Vermeulen (AUS) Rizla Suzuki 1'37.282
11. Andrea Dovizioso (ITA) JiR Team Scot MotoGP 1'37.326
12. Sylvain Guintoli (FRA) Alice Team 1'37.357
13. James Toseland (GBR) Tech 3 Yamaha 1'37.838
14. Jorge Lorenzo (SPA) Fiat Yamaha Team 1'37.960
15. Loris Capirossi (ITA) Rizla Suzuki MotoGP 1'38.082
16. Anthony West (AUS) Kawasaki Racing 1'38.413
17. Toni Elias (SPA) Alice Team 1'38.656
18. Marco Melandri (ITA) Ducati Marlboro 1'39.020
Assen: Record Lap: N. Hayden (Honda) 2006, 1'37.106
Best Lap: J. Hopkins (Suzuki) 2006, 1'36.411
