Valentino Rossi has started his 2006 season by going overall quickest during the Friday free practice sessions in Jerez. Rain in the morning meant that relatively few laps were completed in the first session - Rossi opted not to go out at all. By the time the MotoGP riders were ready to go out again for FP2 the track was almost completely dry, although lap times were still around 2 seconds slower than in the Jerez test a couple of weeks ago.

Rossi's quickest lap of a 1'41.613 looked to have been achieved despite some chatter problems from the Camel Yamaha M1. Each time the number 46 bike returned to the pits it was placed behind a screen whilst suspension adjustments were made out of view of the pitlane.Loris Capirossi was second fastest on what looked like a fairly skittish Desmosedici GP6, although only by a hundredth of a second. MotoGP rookie Dani Pedrosa went joint third fastest with Sete Gibernau; both riders will be hoping to give their home fans something...Read the full article. (http://www.motoreview.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=200&Itemid=29)