Rossi “never expected to come to Jerez as leader”

After a difficult preseason followed by an impressive run of podiums – the only rider to have been on every one in 2017 - Valentino Rossi (Movistar Yamaha MotoGP) heads back to the scene of his first win in 2016 as the points leader in the Championship.

Happy to have solved some of the issues that plagued the nine-time World Champion in testing and feeling better and better on the bike in the latter stages of races, Rossi is happy to have started to unlock the secrets of the 2017 M1 – and is looking to improve

Valentino Rossi: “I would never have expected to come to Jerez as a leader of the Championship. I‘m very happy because we managed to solve some of the problems we had encountered during the winter tests and we are doing really good races. We still have to improve the bike a lot, that's for sure. The weekend in Jerez will be very important. This is the first European race and it‘s a circuit I really enjoy. We have improved a lot in Austin since the first free practice and now it will be important to improve again in Jerez. We are understanding how to work with this bike and I‘m sure we will be able to find what we are looking for.”