"Lots of effort" on day two for Rossi

Having struggled for most of the day with a lack of rear grip Valentino Rossi was able to find a solution in the final hour of the second day of testing to vault himself from the midpack into the top five.

Rossi, who completed the most laps of the day, had made lots of changes during the day but reverting back to his base setting improved things before continuing to tweak the settings.

“It was a difficult day for me because we tried to improve the setup of the bike but the way that we changed the setup didn’t give us the improvement that we expected,” said Rossi. “I was in a difficult situation before the last hour but in that time we made a step forward with the modifications and in the last hour it was quite good and I was fast with the hard and soft tyre and I was able to improve into the top five.

When asked by MCN about the difficulty in finding that balance Rossi spoke about the work that the team had to do to find a solution:

“Today was hard work with a lot of laps and a lot of effort! We tried to modify the settings to improve the rear grip but we couldn’t find anything so when we went back to the settings we had some new ideas and in the last twenty laps the pace was quite good.”