Yamaha chatter finished

Valentino Rossi’s crew chief Jerry Burgess reckons the chatter problems that dogged Yamaha in the early part of last season are now a long and distant memory.

Yamaha engineers have ensured the new chassis designed for Rossi’s factory YZR-M1 machine has eradicated the chatter curse, which badly hampered the Italian in the opening rounds of the 2006 world championship.

So far in winter testing Rossi hasn’t complained of chatter at all and he’s confident going into this weekend’s final test in Jerez that he won’t be struck with the same late surprise.

Rossi had swept all before him in winter last season, only to hit massive chatter problems at the final test in Jerez.

Burgess said: “We corrected our problems through the course of last year and we went to Jerez in late November and we didn’t have any problems there. 

“We are fairly confident that as far as the actual chassis itself is concerned that problem is well behind us. 

“We don’t know what developments in tyre technology and increased corners speeds could bring us back in that area. I am very confident that’s not going to be an issue.

“That problem is buried unless the motorcycle evolves and we push into that zone again. We had that all done and dusted by Le Mans of last year.”