With its straight lines where MotoGP cars reach 350 km/h and relatively few turns, the Red Bull Ring circuit is undoubtedly the Ducatis take pride of place.
Missing out on victory at the next Grand Prix would be an opportunity unlikely to happen again. But for Valentino Rossi, the first “non-Ducati”, the real opponent is called Marc Marquez and was not present during these two days of private testing. Relatively struggling despite the progress made during the second day, will the Yamahas be in front or behind the official Hondas on August 14; This seems to be the main question of the moment…
Valentino Rossi, J.1, 1'25.054, 9th at 1.290: “It's a very special circuit because it's really, really fast, and you spend a lot of time with the throttle wide open. Compared to other circuits, it has many fewer turns; at the end of a lap, you've only done 9 or 10 when normally it's more like 15. He's very fast, the location is good and the corners are OK. For us, personally, it's not the best circuit because we generally suffer a bit in top speed, and in fact, we struggle, but it's just the first day and we have collected a lot of data and lined up the kilometers . »
Valentino Rossi, J.2, 1'24.169, 5th at 0.929: "It was two good days, and especially today since we improved the performance and balance of the bike a lot, also because the track was better, with more rubber where we need it. We were able to improve the times as well as our position, and we were a little closer to the front guys.
I think racing here will be very difficult because it is a fast circuit, and therefore definitely not the best for us and our YZR-M1s. We must work and give the maximum to reap the maximum. Already today we have taken a step forward, and so we will see.
We'll rest and take a vacation, then we'll see what happens when we come back in August.
It will be a very tough race, especially with some of the rival factories; they are faster than us. It will also be very important to understand the potential of other competitors since some are not here. It will be very interesting to see if we are a little faster or a little slower than them, but we will have to wait until the race weekend for that. »
