Valentino Rossi finished the second day of testing at Sepang 13th on the timesheet, one place lower than Tuesday, but that didn’t tell anything like the full story.
The seven time MotoGP champion claims he is 'forgetting' about lap times due to the physical limitations of his healing shoulder, and instead concentrating on parts of the track where he can ride normally.
But that doesn’t mean Rossi is downbeat about the shoulder. In fact it’s the opposite.
“The shoulder recovered overnight and this morning I was back to the same level as yesterday morning,” said the Italian, speaking outside the Ducati pits. “So my shoulder doesn’t suffer too much from riding the MotoGP bike. This is a great and important sign, as it means my shoulder is strong enough to resist.
“But if you see my shoulder it is very, very small. I don’t have any muscle. So lap-by-lap I lose power and gain pain. But we can concentrate on power in the next few weeks and arrive in better condition for the next test.
“Unfortunately, we need to develop and improve the bike now. So we tried to concentrate on the parts of the track where I can ride normally and forgot the parts where I lose a lot because of the shoulder.
“We also tried to forget the lap time, because in two or three braking areas I lose one second.”
Physical assessment over, Rossi turned to technical matters.
“We made a good job today and improved the setting,” he began. “We concentrated a lot on the different tyres because when we change from soft to hard the bike has a different reaction compared to the [Yamaha] M1.
“We also tried some different cowling and made some different tests for the aerodynamics [including no wings, see pic]... I used the 2011 fork. We didn’t try the small [42mm] one. I don’t know if we will try it tomorrow.”
Rossi, who took his 46th and final Yamaha victory at Sepang last October, then revealed that he has two main problems to solve.
“The biggest problem for us is the front vibration, we have a bit too much chatter, but tomorrow we will have some card to play to fix the problem,” he said. “Also we have to work on the turning of the bike. This is the second main issue where we have to improve the Desmosedici.
“Otherwise I feel the bike is more mine. I have a better feeling and I can ride more easily. I try to understand the bike and all the systems. Including the traction control. Because it is quite different from the past.
“We have changed the bike a lot since the first test at Valencia. We worked under a different point of view, front, rear, rider position. All small work but at the end the result is a big difference.
“The plan for tomorrow is to fix the chattering and improve the lap time.”
Rossi rode for 42 laps on day two, compared with 30 on day one, and improved his lap time by 0.768sec.
No comments:
Post a Comment