‘Another good day’ as Rossi reaches the top.

Former five-times world champion Valentino Rossi completed the first MotoGP test of 2007 in style on Wednesday, by putting his new Yamaha on top of the timesheets with the fastest ever 800cc lap of Sepang.

Although Rossi and Factory Yamaha team-mate Colin Edwards finished the final day a little earlier than usual, both completed their full agenda of work, once again trying several new tyres for Michelin, with Rossi also concentrating on improving the balance of the bike when braking.

Rossi’s best time of 2mins 0.936secs was set on a qualifying tyre and is close to his pole position time from last year’s grand prix, when he was riding the old 990cc machine. The Italian’s nearest rival was Suzuki’s John Hopkins, fastest on the opening two days, who clocked a time of 2mins 1.026secs. Edwards, who did not use a qualifying tyre, was eighth fastest with a lap of 2mins 2.266secs.

“Today was another good day for us,” declared Rossi at the end of testing. “We concentrated a lot on braking and definitely made some improvements, although I think we can still make it even better and this is something we will work on when we come back here. We had an important technical meeting today and came to some interesting conclusions, which will help Yamaha’s engineers to continue to improve our new bike. We’ve got through our entire programme for this test, including testing many new tyres for Michelin. [Crash.net]

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Rossi black and yellow at Sepang

 The mystery surrounding Yamaha’s 2007 factory team sponsor continued during the opening day of testing at Sepang, with star rider Valentino Rossi appearing in a new ‘interim’ black and yellow design

The main difference between the latest temporary livery and that seen during late 2006 tests was the appearance of a large Yamaha logo where the to-be-announced new title sponsor’s name will appear… unless of course Yamaha is planning to simply back the factory team itself this season.

Other brands linked to the position previously held by Camel include Fiat, Telefonica, AGV and Imatra.

Rossi himself was wearing new bright yellow leathers, but the former fives-times MotoGP world champion has retained the ‘King Arthur and Excalibur’ helmet design seen at the end of 2006.

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Download and Build a Yamaha YZR-M1 50th Papercraft

Make your own YZR-M1 50th Anniversary US edition! 2005 YZR-M1 Color PDF (978 kb) 2005 YZR-M1 White PDF (772 kb) 2005 Assembly PDF (1227 kb)

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