Mixed Conditions on AmericasGP Opening Day for PETRONAS Yamaha SRT

01-10-2021

Mixed Conditions on AmericasGP Opening Day for PETRONAS Yamaha SRT

Friday’s MotoGP Free Practice at Circuit of the Americas ends with Andrea Dovizioso 14th and Valentino Rossi 17th.

The opening day of the Grand Prix of the Americas got underway today with mixed conditions for PETRONAS Yamaha Sepang Racing Team’s MotoGP riders Andrea Dovizioso and Valentino Rossi, who ended the day 14th and 17th respectively.

Dovizioso set a strong lap in the early part of FP1, when the track was still damp from earlier rainfall, going 12th with a 2mins 20.556secs lap. However, he was unable to improve in the drier conditions and ended FP1 21st. The Italian had a steadier start to FP2, but towards the end of the session set a time that placed him sixth momentarily. Setting a 2mins 5.137secs lap in the final moments, Andrea ended the day inside the top-15 – in 14th.

With a wet track at the start of FP1, Rossi spent time assessing the conditions to see where the damp patches were and reacquainting himself with the Texan circuit. ‘Vale’ ended FP1 20th, after setting a time of 2mins 19.668secs on his final lap. FP2 proved to be a difficult affair for the Italian, who was running 20th for the majority of the 45 minutes. Able to improve his best time to 2mins 5.631secs on his final flying lap, Valentino was 17th at the end of the session.

Track action for Dovizioso and Rossi will resume with FP3 tomorrow at 9.55am local time (10.55pm MYT), followed by the two MotoGP Qualifying sessions at 2.10pm local time (3.10am MYT).

Andrea Dovizioso

"This morning was a crazy session for many reasons, and we had to fix a lot of things, but it was okay. I’m happy about the afternoon though, because my speed wasn’t too bad and I was able to improve. The feeling was a lot better, I was able to brake quite hard and corner entry was good. We are still working on some other things and of course you want everything to be perfect, but everything isn’t like that at the moment. I like this track, the layout is good and there are a lot of places where you can be fast by using the momentum – it isn’t about pure speed. I think this is one of the reasons that I have been able to be more competitive today."

Valentino Rossi

"It wasn’t a good day for us and I didn’t feel that good. We don’t have the speed that we want, especially in the wet. We suffer a lot in the wet conditions because we don’t have enough rear grip to accelerate fully. The situation is better in the dry but I still suffer a lot on the bumps - Turns 2, 3 and especially 10. These places are somewhere that I need to improve and we need to increase our pace. The forecast for today was very bad, but in the end we had some dry running. I hope that tomorrow, and especially for the race on Sunday, that it can be sunny and dry. The rear tyre choice is wide open at the moment, so hopefully we can use tomorrow to finalise our decision on which to use."