The twelfth round of the MotoGP World Championship got underway at Brno in the Czech Republic today, with Fiat Yamaha Riders Valentino Rossi and Colin Edwards finishing the day in sixth and thirteenth positions after two free practice sessions. Yamaha Tech 3 rider Sylvain Guintoli topped the MotoGP free practice charts for the first time in his career.

With scorching sunshine having welcomed the paddock back from the summer break yesterday, an overnight rainstorm dropped the temperature to a more comfortable 23 degrees for today's on-track action. The Yamaha duo got the weekend off to a solid start in the morning, finishing the first free practice in fourth and fifth positions. The afternoon then saw the riders concentrating on refining set-up and making headway towards their final tyre choices and Rossi was able to make an improvement of almost one second on his time from this morning, which was good enough for sixth place overall. Edwards meanwhile ran into some problems and had to settle for thirteenth.

Valentino Rossi - 6th

"Today has gone more or less okay for the first day and, as is usual on a Friday, we spent most of the day working on the set-up of our M1. This morning was okay and then this afternoon we made some more progress and we found out some interesting things, which we hope will help us tomorrow and on Sunday. Despite this we still have quite a lot to improve on; we can and must be faster!

"As for the tyres, the front tyre seems to be working quite well here but we have some problems at the moment with the rear, especially in acceleration. After a few laps the grip is less and then when you open the gas the bike is sliding quite a lot. This was the main problem we were trying to fix throughout the day, and one of the things we did was to make a small change to the parameters of the traction control. This seemed to help and in the last ten minutes this afternoon we felt some improvement and the situation was better. Regarding the set-up, we have also worked on the mapping and engine braking; I still have a couple of corners where the engine braking needs to be improved in order to give me enough confidence when I'm coming into the corner. We had some new things to try out today, including a new fairing which is an evolution of the one that I used in Mugello.
 

"It has definitely helped us a bit, although the advantage it gives us is only small. We've tried pretty much all the new items we have here and tomorrow we will have more time to continue in this way to work out what will help us on Sunday. We will also concentrate on improving the durability of our race tyres with Michelin, because, as usual, this is going to be very important on Sunday. I hope that the weather will be good tomorrow because at the moment the track is quite slippery and in places it's tricky to ride."

Colin Edwards - 13th

"My main problem today was basically that I didn't have much grip. We've tested pretty much all the tyres we have available to us but we haven't yet been able to find a solution that enables me to ride the bike how I want to. At the moment we don't have one that I feel would work for the race, so we need to concentrate on fixing this problem tomorrow. The plan now is to take the one that's working best and turn the bike around to find a compromise that gives us enough traction. I improved a tiny bit this afternoon but everyone else improved a lot more! It's frustrating but I have faith in the team and I am sure we will come up with something tomorrow."

Davide Brivio - Team Director

"As is usual for a Friday, we have some things to work on! We tried some new material with Valentino this morning and now we are trying to improve the set-up further to put ourselves in the best possible shape for Sunday. Also with Colin we have some work to do in order to find a solution to allow the tyres to work at their best for him. Now we need to work very hard in the two sessions tomorrow and use the time to evaluate the new things we've got here, to decide if they will give us an advantage in the race."