Rossi: 'Another positive day'

Rossi pleased with his progress on the new Desmosedici GP12



VALENTINO ROSSI continues to be pleased with his work on-board the new Ducati Desmosedici GP12, despite falling further back from the fastest time.

The Italian ended the second day at Sepang in sixth place with a fastest time of 2:01.886, an improvement on his lap time from yesterday but further back on the quickest time, this time a 2:00.895 set by Casey Stoner on the Repsol Honda.

“It was another positive day, both because we achieved our goal of lapping at 2:01 and because we managed to make further progress with the bike’s setup." said Rossi, who was the final rider to finish within a second of Stoner's fastest lap.

"On the other hand, as is normal with a brand-new bike like the GP12, as we progress with our tests we also find other details that can’t be addressed with setup alone and that will therefore have to be perfected in the coming weeks.

"We had already identified those areas yesterday, acceleration and electronics, and we confirmed the progress made with the front end. Honda and Yamaha have been working on their bikes for a year, while we’ve just had two days, which makes our job particularly challenging, but we already knew that as well.

"Tomorrow will be important as well because we’ll be able to make an overall assessment of the three days, and we’ll have a clearer idea of where we stand compared to the others. If we manage to stay under one second from the top, I’ll be happy.”

For the second day of testing the Ducati team concentrated on creating a base setting for the brand new Desmosedici GP12, along with assessing new parts for the 1000cc machine.