Yamaha rider Valentino Rossi made his highly-anticipated comeback to MotoGP racing on Friday morning after 21 days of recovery since sustaining a leg injury.
The Doctor started the FP1 session with the goal of getting a good feeling aboard the YZR-M1.
After a brief period of familiarisation, Rossi made his first steps forward whilst working on his bike‘s setting and clocked a 2'04.066s for 18th, 2.823s from the top of the timesheets.
The rain continued to add slipperiness as an extra challenge, but the Italian kept focused on perfecting his bike‘s set-up.
He impressed with some red sectors throughout the session and improved on his morning time by more than two seconds, when he set a 2'01.917s, 2.059s from first.
He wrapped up the first day in Spain in 20th place in the combined timesheets, but was overall happy with the way he was feeling on the bike.
“I‘m quite happy, because I feel comfortable on the bike,” he said. “I was good already from this morning and also because the leg, after two practice sessions, is in a good condition, I don‘t feel a lot of pain.”
“For sure on the wet it‘s a bit easier, because it‘s less demanding to ride the bike, but I hope we will have better weather conditions tomorrow and on Sunday, in order to try to understand my level on the dry and also so we can work on the setting and the tyres.”
