Rossi in charge in Jerez

Valentino Rossi may have found himself criticised for taking a few days off at the Sepang test earlier this month to go rally driving, but he:s making up for it in Spain this week.

Some fans questioned the wisdom of Rossi missing a crucial test of the new 800s after he failed to retain his MotoGP title, but the Italian wracked up 82 laps of testing on his new 800cc M1 on day two of the test at Jerez, and set the fastest time to boot.

Rossi came within 0.1s of his own 2005 lap record at the test, while working through numerous chassis and electronic set-ups.

Crucially the Italian ands his team-mate Colin Edwards (third fastest) say there is no appearance of the chatter problems which were so evident at Jerez on the 990cc M1.

The second fastest man Dani Pedrosa looked in no such trouble, only a little over 0.1s off Rossi.

Unofficial Times:
1. Valentino Rossi 1:40.688
2. Dani Pedrosa  1:40.7993
3. Colin Edwards 1:41.186
4. John Hopkins 1:41.205
5. Chris Vermeulen 1:41.619
6. Casey Stoner 1:41.702
7. Loris Capirossi 1:42.244
8. Marco Melandri 1:42.469
9. Shinya Nakano 1:42.528
10. Alex Barros 1:43.182
11. Tadayuki Okada 1:42.316
12. Vittorio Guareschi  1:44.449
13. Jeremy McWilliams 1:45.265    
14. Andrew Pitt 1:47.110