MotoGP news

Rossi confident after solid day of practice

After a strong performance in Friday's opening practice and a steady performance in the wet second free practice session Rossi is confident for the rest of the Mugello weekend.

As a result of this afternoon's downpour the fastest times of the day were set in this morning's dry Free Practice, when Rossi was second fastest behind Dani Pedrosa. The home-favourite was pleased with the initial performance of his Yamaha and is confident of making further improvements tomorrow as he works towards a record sixth consecutive home-race victory on Sunday.

Rossi said about today's work: "This weather isn't really what we expect in Mugello! I'm quite happy today however because this morning in the dry I was already fast, setting some good lap times and finishing second. We still need to improve the setting a little bit but I think we're going in the right way. We tried some new tyres that we found during the Le Mans test and they weren't so bad, so hopefully we can improve things more tomorrow.

"I'm happy about this afternoon's session in the wet too because I was also very fast! I think if I hadn't crashed it would have been possible to have finished on top, so I'm sorry about that. It was my mistake! I arrived a little bit too fast at the braking and went down but I was lucky; I didn't hurt myself and the bike is not so bad. Anyway it was a good session because now we understand that we can fight with our tyre rivals also in the wet, if we choose the right tyre. Now let's hope for some sunshine tomorrow!"

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