Following their first day of work together in the Yamaha Factory Racing box Valentino Rossi and his new Crew Chief Silvano Galbusera reacted positively to the testing they carried out at Valencia.

Rossi finished second on Monday’s timesheet, less than 0.1s behind pace setting teammate Jorge Lorenzo as both riders spent some time evaluating the 2014 YZR-M1 alongside a 2013 reference machine.

Lorenzo and Rossi also made some laps with the new standard ECU that will be used as part of the 2014 regulations.

Rossi’s best time of 1'31.350 was registered with his 2013 bike and was significantly quicker than his fastest lap of 1'31.987 from Sunday’s race - as he adapted to working with incoming technician Galbusera, who replaces Jeremy Burgess.

Before the final race of 2013 at Valencia Rossi had stunned the paddock with his announcement that Burgess and he were to separate after 14 years of working together.

On Monday evening Rossi stated,

“Today was very emotional, it was something different. We were working a long time with Jeremy so today was like a restart from the beginning but I’m happy and I’m satisfied with the day. I know Silvano already from Superbike as I did some testing in 2010 with the R1 together with him and I liked the way we worked. It’s just the first day but anyway it was a good day for me, I was faster and we worked well on the bike.”

He continued,

“The condition of the track and the weather were perfect so I enjoyed it a lot. We worked with both bikes, I liked the new one a lot, it has good power exit from the corners and the chassis gives a good feeling on the front so the first impression is very positive.”

On his new job, meanwhile, Galbusera enthused,

“For me it’s a great chance to work with him, because everybody knows the level of Valentino. The first contact is just to learn the bike and understand Valentino, before making changes and working like a normal technician.”

“It’s been good, the Japanese engineers prepared the test schedule. I don’t know the bike yet, so we just followed the test plan that we had in mind. The results have been good and tomorrow we’ll keep working in the same way, working on some of the critical weak points which Valentino has recently identified. Things don’t look too bad.”


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