Local hero Valentino Rossi was out on track in the Tuscan sunshine on Friday morning and impressed with his brave performance as he prepared for his first home race of the season.
Despite the fact that he‘s still recovering from injury, the Italian completed 15 laps and tested various settings for his YZR-M1 throughout the morning practice, to finish in fifteenth place with a best lap of 1'48.513s, 1.119s off the fastest time.
The nine-time World Champion further improved in FP2.
Encouraged by the loud cheering of the Italian fans, he gradually quickened his pace.
He used the afternoon session to further fine-tune his bike‘s setting and finished strong, in twelfth place, with a fastest lap of 1'48.000s, 0.513s faster than his best time of FP1 and 0.635s from the FP2 leader.
“Today's sessions were very important to get an understanding of my condition,” he explained. “This morning I suffered a lot, I had a lot of pain on the right, especially on acceleration, but this afternoon the situation was a bit better. I struggled physically, especially with my breathing, because I'm not at 100%, but it is getting better. We hope that tomorrow and Sunday the situation will improve. Usually Friday is the most difficult day, so we had to suffer a bit, but we tried.”
