The first free practice sessions got underway today for this weekend’s Gran Premio Movistar de Aragón at the Motorland Aragón circuit in Spain. Movistar Yamaha MotoGP riders Jorge Lorenzo and Valentino Rossi faced a challenging kick-off to the weekend with a number of set up challenges to resolve. With track conditions very different to when the team tested at Aragón earlier in the year, there was no advantage to be had from the taken data.

Local hero Lorenzo was able to rise to third in the morning session, just over 0.5 seconds from the top but dropped to seventh in the afternoon practice, increasing the distance to first to 0.684 seconds. The results leave him in seventh in the combined times ahead of tomorrow’s sessions.

Teammate Rossi was facing the same issues as he pushed to tame his YZR-M1 on the sweeping circuit. The Misano race winner finished the morning in sixth position, 0.947 from first and dropped to just over the second from the top in the afternoon to finish in tenth in the overall times.

Jorge Lorenzo - 7th / 1'48.969 / 17 Laps

“We are using a completely different tyre to the rest of the riders. Valentino didn't like so much the hard front, I don't know if he tried the soft in the last laps but for me it was better with the softer option. Tomorrow we will do some more laps to see if it will be constant for the duration of the race. We didn't start in the best way possible, we are very far from the front, but the thing that worries us is that we are far from my ideal time here from last year so we have margin to improve. I feel great physically and mentally but the bike needs to improve a bit. We are going to test a different set up for tomorrow so I’m looking forward to continuing.”

Valentino Rossi - 10th / 1'49.312 / 18 Laps

“Together with Yamaha and Bridgestone we decided to try the hard rear to understand if it’s good option but it proved difficult. At the same time I struggled with the front as I was suffering some under steer so we decided to try the soft front; that was not so bad. We made some important data for tomorrow because we tried all the combinations. We need to work a lot as we suffer with rear grip and corner speed. The bike is difficult to ride and I’m not fast enough so tomorrow we have to improve a lot.”

Massimo Meregalli - Movistar Yamaha MotoGP Team Director

“It’s been a difficult first day, unfortunately we couldn't get the bike to work as we wanted to. We have a number of challenges to resolve in set up to progress as the condition of the track now is completely different to when we tested here. We tested various tyre combinations so we are closer to understanding the choices and we'll know more after the next sessions. We will work hard tonight to find solutions and we fully expect to make significant steps forward tomorrow.”

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