Valentino Rossi was delighted at the end of one of his strongest Fridays of the season despite waking up with an upset stomach this morning. The Movistar Yamaha rider was second fastest behind LCR Honda’s Cal Crutchlow with the team appearing to have overcome the problems which hampered them so much in Austria last time out.
Although it looked plain sailing from the outside, Rossi admitted afterwards that his preparation for the weekend was far from ideal, but things would improve once he started to ride the YZR-M1.
“This morning, I woke up trying to vomit and I was not in great shape. This afternoon I was better and fortunately when I ride, I’m good. We have a good pace with the used tyre, I’m still competitive and my lap times are quite consistent. We start in a good way. For sure, we have a lot of details to fix but we have a good speed and I’m happy.”
Practice took place in unusually high British temperatures and Rossi was encouraged by the performance of his Yamaha on used tyres, although he isn’t sure yet which option he will choose for Sunday’s race.
“First of all, arriving at Silverstone with this incredible weather is great and a nice surprise and the track is fantastic. I had a good feeling from the bike from the first lap. Sometimes, I have a very good feeling with the bike and the tyres, other times I suffer more like a lot of other times through the season. We did a lot of laps on used tyres, we tried the medium and the hard. This weekend the three options for the rear tyre are quite open for everybody so it will be very important to make the right choice on Sunday.”
“Our bike works very well at this track. I think some things we tried at Misano can work well here. We can feel the tyres at this track and we can be strong with a good pace.”
