Movistar Yamaha riders Maverick Vinales and Valentino Rossi were both cautiously optimistic at the end of the two-day Valencia test. Both riders saw their title hopes fade late in the 2017 season as their YZR-M1 proved increasingly problematic, either struggling for grid late in dry races or throughout wet races altogether.
Vinales and Rossi each tested 2016, 2017 and 2018 chassis and engine combinations and Vinales hopes the data gathered will give them a base to work from when they next go testing in Sepang next month.
“Today we were working on the engines and trying to understand this side very well, so we would know which direction to take and I‘m quite happy. We worked well over these two days. Sure, yesterday I felt more comfortable on the bike. The track conditions changed a little bit, but I‘m satisfied anyway. The team was working well and the good feeling came back, so it‘s nice to end the test like that. In Sepang I will start the private test as I ended the GP there, because I felt quite good in qualifying, so this is a good point of reference. I hope for at least one day of rain in Malaysia, that would be perfect for us, to try the bike and the electronics and it would also be good to try the new engines in the wet.”
Rossi was one of the last riders left circulating as the sun began to set on Valencia and the Italian is looking forward to resuming the hard work in Malaysia.
“Today we had some work to do, because we had to test and decide on some different engines. It was a long day, but it was positive. We concentrated on that and also tried some other things, nothing great, but in the end it was not so bad. Like I said, we mainly tested on the engines, so I don‘t know about anything else yet. We‘ll see in Malaysia.”
