A promising start saw Petronas Yamaha’s Valentino Rossi end his first day in France ninth in the Le Mans combined times.

Changeable conditions saw Rossi kick off the opening FrenchGP practice on wet tyres as he navigated the legendary Bugatti layout inside the top-10, working his way up to sixth before the drying track saw multiple riders gamble on slick tyres. Choosing to remain on the wet option, the Italian’s 1’41.524 lap saw him end FP1 14th.

A dry FP2 allowed Rossi to once again showcase a strong pace, as his opening laps placed him inside the top-five but with times improving rapidly throughout the session, he found himself briefly out of the top-ten at the halfway point. The Doctor recovered, however, in the closing stages to conclude the day ninth in the combined times, with a best lap of 1’32.669 and a provisional promotion into Saturday’s Q2 shootout.

“A better day for us,” explained Rossi on Friday afternoon.

“Already this morning in the wet I was quite fast and I feel good with the bike, but I needed the dry practice to understand if the work that we did in the Monday test in Jerez can help us, here in Le Mans.

“We were lucky, FP2 was full dry so we could push, try to understand and at the end I am in the top-10, I am P9. During both practices, I ride in a better way, I am more constant, I have a decent pace, I can brake deeper and enter faster, so was not too bad. At the end I am in the top-10 and that is very important and it looks like we are a bit stronger compared to the first races.

“I think that the work in Jerez help us a lot, because we work hard in the Monday test. We modify the setting of the suspension, different forks, and for example we modify the weight balance of the bike. We try also a different carbon swingarm that is good and all these things help us to be stronger, especially brake and entry, I can bring more speed into the corner without running wide, and I feel better on the bike.

“I still have some problems because here we have some braking where I am a bit too much on the limit, I need to try to brake deeper, but this is the normal work. It’s just Friday, we just need to improve the general settings, and all the small things. After, will depend very much on the weather.”

Discussing the obvious topic at the French track, Rossi exclaims “Turn three, is a nightmare!” before continuing to explain the corner’s challenges.

“Every lap when you arrive, you are very worried. First of all it is the first corner on the left, and you arrive after a long time - two corners on the right, the long straight, corners on the right and after you arrive on the left - especially with the low temperature, the tyre is cold, so you don’t have a lot of grip. Second thing, that has a lot of effect is the negative banking, and this is a disaster for the bike because you arrive and you have to lean the bike on the left but on that negative banking is a big problem. The third factor, very important, is that the track is used by the cars for the 24 hour of Le Mans, and the part that the cars use has less grip, because the track is more under stress, the asphalt is more old - because when you make 24 hours with 70 cars, for sure the track becomes old very, very early - so I think that it’s these three factors.”

Returning to the matter at hand, Rossi concluded “The first target is to stay in the top-10 tomorrow morning, and we need to understand if it will be dry in the morning, in the afternoon, and then we see. Sunday, for the race, the forecast at the moment is not fantastic but here in Le Mans everything changes in five minutes so we can expect everything. Wet, dry, everything is open. I prefer a dry race or if it is wet a full wet race without flag-to-flag. The Yamaha is normally good at Le Mans, so this is important.”