A strong opening day saw Valentino Rossi end in second and as the only rider within three quarters of a second of Movistar Yamaha teammate Jorge Lorenzo. Multiple private tests at the Spanish track allowed Rossi and his Movistar Yamaha team to come with a predefined base setting, resulting in more work on the finer details of his M1. Unfortunately, Rossi was unable to match the blistering pace of Lorenzo who stamped his authority on proceedings.

Tyres will play a critical role throughout the weekend, especially for Sunday’s race and Rossi is still debating using the medium or the hard tyre and he feels he needs more information with both. Saturday will focus on choosing a tyre, the Repsol Honda riders yet to fit the softer option as Yamaha did in FP2. Rossi believes this to be the main reason that neither Marc Marquez nor Dani Pedrosa were inside the top three.

Valentino Rossi:

“We did a test last month at Aragón, because it‘s our test track. We decided on this circuit because in the past we suffered a lot here on the Yamaha. The start of the weekend was not so bad because we could start with a good basis setting and in this practice both me and Jorge were very strong, but Jorge was a little bit faster, so we need to continue to work and try to improve in some sectors just a little bit. After that the tyre choice for the race will be very important. You can go with the medium or the hard, right now it‘s still too early to say. Tomorrow we need to improve the setting and make the right choice for the tyres. We tried the softer tyre at the end of the session but our main rival didn‘t. If they had done so, they would have been at our level, but as long as we are able to fight with them on Sunday it‘s OK, because they are usually a bit stronger here. We have to work on braking, to be able to go deep into the corner yet have a good agility.”