Looking good in this year’s championship after the weekend’s events at Brno, Valentino Rossi and his team were making early plans for 2010 in the post race test.
After another success story for Valentino Rossi in Sunday’s Cardion AB Czech Republic Grand Prix has put him in a great position in the 2009 championship and the current Fiat Yamaha package is the strongest on the MotoGP grid, but in Monday’s post-race test the Italian and his team were already looking ahead to next year.
Six-time premier class World Champion Rossi got a first chance to test prototype developments for 2010, trying out a new chassis and a new engine specification, setting his best time of the day just before the end of the afternoon session, which had been interrupted by rain.
Rossi’s best time of 1’56.622, was under the new lap record set by his team-mate Jorge Lorenzo in Sunday’s race, but was the second best time of the test – 0.451s behind Lorenzo’s best test lap.
Rossi stated, “We had some important work to do as we were testing a 2010 spec engine which is more resistant and should be able to do more kilometers. We also tested the first prototype of the 2010 chassis, but I did just 20 laps in the morning.”
“Unfortunately it rained in the lunch break and so we couldn’t ride for a lot of the afternoon because of the wet rack, but it dried enough for us to do some more work at the end. This time we could really concentrate on doing a proper job testing the chassis and the new engine specification, and I was quite fast.”
Team Manager Davide Brivio added, “We got a lot done and we were able to collect a lot of data about the new chassis and engine spec, which will help the engineers back in Japan with their development for the future and next year’s bike. We also tried some electronic mapping and it was a very useful day for us. We’re now approaching the final stage of the championship and we can’t relax because our rivals are strong, so now everyone can have a well-deserved rest and then we’ll be ready for anything in Indianapolis!”
