Rossi happy with progress with new chief Galbusera

Valentino Rossi says that his first day testing without Jeremy Burgess at his side was ‘emotional,’ but that he’s pleased with the progress he’s made with new crew chief Silvano Galbusera, who has replaced the Australian after 14 years.

Rossi, who rode his new 2014 machine with control ECU alongside his current machine, lapped only 0.1 off teammate Lorenzo to finish the first day of the three half a second quicker than his Sunday race pace.

After testing Rossi told the press, “Today was very emotional, it was something different. We were working a long time with Jeremy so today was like a restart from the beginning but I’m happy and I’m satisfied with the day. I know Silvano already from Superbike as I did some testing in 2010 with the R1 together with him and I liked the way we worked. It’s just the first day but anyway it was a good day for me, I was faster and we worked well on the bike.”

 “The condition of the track and the weather were perfect so I enjoyed it a lot. We worked with both bikes, I liked the new one a lot, it has good power exit from the corners and the chassis gives a good feeling on the front so the first impression is very positive.”

Galbusera added, “For me it’s a great chance to work with him, because everybody knows the level of Valentino. The first contact is just to learn the bike and understand Valentino, before making changes and working like a normal technician.”

“I don’t know the bike yet, so we just followed the test plan that we had in mind. The results have been good and tomorrow we’ll keep working in the same way, working on some of the critical weak points which Valentino has recently identified. Things don’t look too bad.”