Detail

The Camel Yamaha Team remained in Jerez yesterday for an intense afternoon of testing in an effort to find some answers to the problems they faced over the course of the season's opening weekend. Valentino Rossi and Colin Edwards completed 72 and 76 laps respectively and made some positive steps towards understanding the cause of the vibration that kept their lap times down during the weekend's practice sessions and forced them to start from the fourth row of the grid for sunday's race.

Rossi, who was brought down by another rider at the first corner of the race after a lightening start, also completed one run yesterday on the 2005-specification YZR-M1, in order to compare its performance with the 2006 bike and gather more data to help the engineers find a final solution ahead of the next race.

The Camel Yamaha Team now have a week's rest before they travel to Qatar early next week for the second MotoGP race of the season.


Davide Brivio Camel Yamaha Team Director
"After such a disappointing opening weekend to the season, it was important for us to have the chance to test yesterday. It was a very useful and interesting day for us and we were able to collect a lot of important information which we believe will help us. It was good to be able to go back to some of the settings that we tried over the weekend and to evaluate them in a more relaxed atmosphere, without the time pressure of a race weekend.
In addition we decided to have Valentino ride the 2005 M1 for a few laps so we could compare its performance at this track with that of the new bike. It was interesting to see the difference of a few things about the 05 bike are better at the moment, but overall it seems the 06 bike is still a more improved package and Valentino's fastest times yesterday were on the 2006-spec M1. Anyway the data from this comparison should help us a lot as we continue to develop the new bike. Valentino was able to make some good improvements to the performance of the 06 bike so this is encouraging for Qatar. Colin's test wasn't quite as positive but after yesterday we now have a better idea of what to do in order to bring him back to the level he was at in Barcelona. It's been an important day for us and now the Yamaha engineers will work hard to evaluate the data gathered so that we can come to Qatar and fight at the front with both riders where they belong."

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