Buzzin MotoGP

Four of the Moto GP riders have continued in France with a two day testing session at the Le Mans circuit with Valentino Rossi finishing in top.

Rossi, who won the Le Mans Grand Prix on Sunday, was testing out some new settings on the Fiat Yamaha and also continuing to test with the Bridgestone tyres.

Davide Brivio, Yamaha Team Manager said “It was a nice quiet day on track today and it was good to have the chance to work in such a relaxed atmosphere, without so many other riders around.  We finished quite early but we managed to get a lot of important work done, both on tyres with Bridgestone and on the general set-up of our bike with the next few races in mind.  We tested more different tyres and also made some experiments with different settings, trying to collect as much information as possible to help us to continue to improve.  The next eight weeks brings six races in close succession and so we need to be at the top of our game!  Valentino did a very good time with a race tyre this afternoon so it’s clear we’re working well, and now we’re leaving Le Mans with some great memories and with everyone feeling positive and motivated for the busiest stage of the season.”

Rossi completed 44 laps for the team on Tuesday and set a best time of 1:33.882, which was 0.333 seconds quicker than the fastest lap of the race on Sunday set by the Italian rider on his 90th winning race.

The reigning World Champion Casey Stoner, was the second fastest man testing.  The team finished their testing early after the engineers discovered the component that caused the breakdown of the Ducati’s engine on Sunday ending Stoner’s race.  The team decided it would be better not to test in the afternoon session to avoid further damage to other engines.

The engineers back at the teams factory will now replace this component before the next race at Mugello on the 1 June.  Stoner had already completed the majority of the work the team had planned before their early finish along with team-mate Marco Melandri, although he had only completed a handful of laps on the second day and finished in fourth place behind the HRC Test team rider Erwan Nigon.