Difficult Day for Rossi

MotoGP champion Valentino Rossi remains confident of success in Malaysia despite trailing in the wake of fellow Italian Loris Capirossi on the first day at Sepang.

Valentino Rossi (6th - 2'02.970; 41 laps)
"It's been a difficult first day - more so in the morning than the afternoon, which means we are working in the right way. I was confident after the Brno test, especially about the tyres and the way they are working now with our M1. Unfortunately in the conditions we have found here that setting doesn't work so well and we had a few problems with tyre life. So in the afternoon basically we adapted the setting using the data we gathered in the January tests, when I was very fast, and things improved a lot. Tomorrow we'll move even closer to that setting and I'm very confident we can make a big improvement again. Loris was very fast today and it looks like it will be a tough challenge to beat him, but we have good base data for this circuit and I'm sure we can get back to the pace I know I am capable of here."