MotoGP news
Rossi determined to take consolation win
13 October 2007Valentino Rossi qualified second for the second consecutive race at Phillip Island today, sealing his eleventh front-row start of the season at a track that has seen him top the podium seven times in his career. The Fiat Yamaha Team rider will share the front row with Dani Pedrosa and Casey Stoner, promising an exciting battle between the top three riders in the championship for tomorrow's Australian Grand Prix. Rossi's team-mate Colin Edwards meanwhile had a less successful qualifying session, setting the eleventh fastest lap, which will put him in the middle of the fourth row on tomorrow's grid.
"Today has been a good day and this afternoon especially we were able to have a very positive practice," said Rossi. "This afternoon was the first full hour we've had in the dry and we were able to do some very good work on the setting. Now we have a clear idea about what we need to do for tomorrow, because we still have a few things to improve. We also need to make our final tyre choice and this is going to be very important for tomorrow. I'm really happy because today it was great fun to ride my M1 around this track, which I love. I was quite confident with the qualifying tyre and when I saw 29.4 I thought maybe it was enough for the pole, but Pedrosa was even faster. Anyway second is a good result and the important thing is that we're on the front row. We now need to improve our race pace a little bit more if possible and then I hope for a great race tomorrow."
Edwards commented, "Honestly speaking, I just don't know exactly what the problem is this weekend, but we can't seem to get the bike to work how we want it to. We've tried all sorts to find a way forward but it's still feeling nervous and twitchy and just not like the bike I know. I couldn't get in or out of corners how I wanted today and I was lacking corner speed, so it was really a hard slog. With the qualifier I was a lot better but it still wasn't enough to push for the top spots. We've got some issues and we need to put our heads together to try to pull something out of the bag for tomorrow. We'll make the most of warm-up and see what we can do."
Team director Davide Brivio added, "The first row is very good for Valentino and with Pedrosa and Stoner either side of him I think it's going to be very interesting to see how the race will develop. We have a few things to fine-tune on his race setting and then we will just hope that our package will enable him to stay in the fight to the end. With Colin we have some issues and now we need to work hard with his engineers to look at the information from today and see if we can find a way to improve his pace for tomorrow.£
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