MotoGP news

Rossi still struggling a bit

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 record, 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.

"Second place this afternoon is not bad at all, considering that this morning we had some problems," Rossi said about his day of testing at Assen on Thursday. " 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!"

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