On August 14th the Red Bull Ring - Spielberg will make its first official appearance as a MotoGP™ World Championship track. Before that riders and teams have a chance to sample the Austrian track at a private two-day test after the German GP. Valentino Rossi (Movistar Yamaha MotoGP) was able to learn the track and work on his setting ahead of the race. As at any test, Michelin had brought new tyres for the riders to try and Rossi helped the French brand to assess them. ‘The Doctor’ ended the second day as the fifth fastest on the unofficial time sheets with a best time of 1’24.169.
"It will be a very difficult race, especially with some of our factory rivals, they are faster than us"Valentino Rossi: “It‘s a very particular circuit because it is really, really fast and you spend a lot of time with the throttle fully open. Compared to the other circuits it has a lot less corners, at the end of the lap you have done only nine or ten, normally there are around fifteen. It‘s very fast and the place is good and the corners are OK. For us, personally, it‘s not the best circuit because usually we suffer a bit on top speed, and in fact we are struggling, but it‘s just the first day and we collected a lot of data and made some kilometres.
“It was two good days, especially today we improved the performance and the balance of the bike a lot, but also the track was better, with more rubber where we needed it. We were able to improve the lap times and our position and we‘re a little bit closer to the top guys. I think racing here will be very difficult because it‘s a fast track, so for sure it‘s not the best circuit for us or for the YZR-M1. We have to work and give the maximum to get the maximum. Already today, we made a step and now we‘ll see. We‘ll get some rest and take a holiday and we will see what happens when we come back in August. It will be a very difficult race, especially with some of our factory rivals, they are faster than us. It will be very important to also understand the potential of the other competitors, because some are not here. It will be interesting to see if we are a little bit faster or slower than them, but we‘ll have to wait for the race weekend.”