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Sunday July 5, 2009

Rossi blazes the track during US GP practice

LAGUNA SECA (California): World MotoGP championship leader Valentino Rossi set the fastest time during free practice at the US Grand Prix on Friday.

The current MotoGP ‘big three’ were on top again, Rossi followed on the timesheet by his Yamaha team-mate Jorge Lorenzo and Ducati’s Casey Stoner.

Rossi’s 1:21.981 lap around the shortest track on the MotoGP calendar, on the last of his 32 laps, was enough to put him 0.112s ahead of the young pretender to his crown Lorenzo.

A first lap crash in the 2008 race on his Laguna Seca debut, Lorenzo will aim to put the memories of last year’s contest behind him and already looks comfortable around the American track.

Stoner was just 0.189 down on Rossi’s pace himself as he tested his condition following the severe exhaustion he has experienced in recent weeks. The 2007 Laguna race-winning Australian is out for revenge over Rossi this weekend following their epic 2008 battle which Rossi won in such style.

In fourth place was Honda’s Dani Pedrosa. The Spanish rider is still fighting back to 100% fitness this weekend, although he is already in far better shape than last year when he went home after the Friday practices due to injuries he sustained at Sachsenring.

There was also a good start to the weekend for Honda’s Toni Elias who immediately benefitted from the new chassis on the Honda RC212V to finish fifth quickest.

Italian pair Andrea Dovizioso and Marco Melandri were sixth and seventh respectively. Suzuki’s Chris Vermeulen crashed at the beginning of the session but soon got back out on track to complete 27 laps and still managed to come in eighth.

Colin Edwards and Alex de Angelis rounded out the top ten.

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