Cautious Start for Movistar Yamaha on Soaked Opening Day in Spain

Valentino Rossi started the fourth round of the 2017 MotoGP World Championship today at an overcast Circuito de Jerez. While rain dampened the pace in FP1, the Movistar Yamaha MotoGP racer rounded up the FP2 session in Spanish sunshine, taking twelfth place respectively and the same positions in the combined time sheets. Rossi kept his patience in this morning‘s miserable conditions. With FP1 being uncharacteristically wet for the Andalusian circuit, he used the session to adjust his bike's wet setting and assemble some valuable data to be used for future wet GPs. He slowly upped his pace during the 45-minute outing and finished with a best lap of 1'53.263s, for 16th position, 1.615s from the front. The Doctor carried forward his gradual improvements in the afternoon. He was keen to return to the track and get a feel for the drying Circuito de Jerez, whilst skilfully avoiding the wet patches. He continued to work hard on his setting and dropped under the 1'41-mark on his third and last stint. His fastest time of 1‘40.698s leaves him just outside the top10, in 12th place in today's combined times, 1.278s from the front. Valentino Rossi The conditions were quite wet today. This morning the track was full wet and the first impression is that with this bike we suffer a bit more. We have to work. In fact, we were not very fast this morning. In the afternoon it was dry, but not completely, so we had to stay cautious because there were some humid patches. In the afternoon we also had some problems. We are not fast enough, so we have to work Massimo Meregalli Movistar Yamaha MotoGP Team - Team Director There was rain predicted for today and it certainly played a role in FP1 and FP2. The track conditions were very tricky in the morning, so we were careful not to take any risks, especially since we expect tomorrow and Sunday to be dry. We made most of the situation to work on a wet setting, that still needs to be improved on this year‘s bike. Valentino faced some difficulties due to the conditions of the track and couldn‘t work properly on the set-up of his bike. We have work to do on both sides of the garage to fine-tune the settings for tomorrow‘s FP3 and we expect the condition of the track to become better too, which will allow us to exploit our bike‘s strongest points