
Valentino Rossi acknowledged on Friday that he is currently slightly behind in terms of setup work at Valencia. For not the first time this season, the Italian World Champion was the slowest of the two Yamahas in first practice but is confident about his pace for the remainder of the weekend.
With all riders hoping to see the season out on a high in Spain, Rossi finished fourth and almost seven tenths of a second off Casey Stoner's leading pace on Friday. "It's really nice to be riding as the World Champion without having to think about points and now I just want to finish the year with a good race," 'The Doctor' said.
"Today was not so bad; I'm not happy with fourth but we're not far off and we worked well on the bike. We had some different settings to work on to try to improve our performance at this track and then at the end I was able to do some good laps all together.
"Tomorrow we have quite a lot of work to do - we need to try the harder Bridgestone tyre and try to make another step with the settings but, so far, we have done a good job."
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