Rossi back to work

From Yamaha Racing

After making another step up the all-time winners list to joint second with his 90th career victory last Sunday, Valentino Rossi wasted no time in getting started on working towards number 91 at Le Mans Monday.

It was the first of two days of testing for Rossi, who was the sole occupant of the Fiat Yamaha Team garage as teammate Jorge Lorenzo flew back to Spain after his hard-fought second Sunday to continue rehabilitation on his fractured ankles.

Rossi focused largely on tire testing Monday as well as refining the set-up of his M1. Most of the paddock stayed on to test and Rossi was second fastest after 68 laps with a best lap of 1:33.661, set on a qualifying Bridgestone.

The Italian is keen to head to his home race at Mugello next week in the best possible shape and will therefore continue testing Tuesday, when he will have the track almost to himself with most teams are packing up Monday night.

"Monday was a good day, even if it was quite hard to get back to work after the great day we had Sunday," Rossi said. "We tested many different tires with Bridgestone, both qualifiers and race tires, and collected a lot of information. The tires we tested were mostly for the future development, not so much for the next few races, but it's very important to look ahead like this and we found some good material.

"Of course we worked on the setting a bit as well and also tested some new electronic maps, and now we will continue with more tire testing again tomorrow. Our aim for this test is just to make sure the bike is in the best possible shape for the Italian challenge that is waiting around the corner."