The Fiat Yamaha star, fifth on his Bridgestone debut at Losail, was instantly on the pace at Jerez - sitting third in opening practice, then taking second, just 0.043secs behind Michelin-shod rookie team-mate Jorge Lorenzo, during the faster afternoon hour.
"After Qatar, to be third this morning and second this afternoon on just the first day makes me quite happy!" admitted the Italian. "I feel comfortable on the bike and tyres, although we need to work a little bit harder to find the perfect race rhythm for Sunday. I had fun on the bike today and I am quite fast so I think we have a good base to build on.
"To have three Yamahas at the top again is great and once again shows how good our bike is. With the Bridgestones it feels quite good and I think we're improving the package all the time but we can't afford to stop working so tomorrow we will do the maximum once again. It's great to be riding here in the sunshine and I think it's going to be a great show this weekend for everyone!" he added.
"After the Qatar race our engineers have made a deep analysis of the issues we had there and they and have come here with some different ideas to try and they seem to be working well," confirmed team manager Davide Brivio. "It looks like we've found the right way to combine our bike and the tyres together and so we have a good base on which to build for the rest of the weekend. Now we have to concentrate on making the best tyre choice for the race, we already have a good pace but it's going to be very competitive on Sunday so we need to be in the best possible shape!"
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"After Qatar, to be third this morning and second this afternoon on just the first day makes me quite happy!" admitted the Italian. "I feel comfortable on the bike and tyres, although we need to work a little bit harder to find the perfect race rhythm for Sunday. I had fun on the bike today and I am quite fast so I think we have a good base to build on.
"To have three Yamahas at the top again is great and once again shows how good our bike is. With the Bridgestones it feels quite good and I think we're improving the package all the time but we can't afford to stop working so tomorrow we will do the maximum once again. It's great to be riding here in the sunshine and I think it's going to be a great show this weekend for everyone!" he added.
"After the Qatar race our engineers have made a deep analysis of the issues we had there and they and have come here with some different ideas to try and they seem to be working well," confirmed team manager Davide Brivio. "It looks like we've found the right way to combine our bike and the tyres together and so we have a good base on which to build for the rest of the weekend. Now we have to concentrate on making the best tyre choice for the race, we already have a good pace but it's going to be very competitive on Sunday so we need to be in the best possible shape!"
crash.net