Ducati rider Rossi laps closer to Stoner’s time during Jerez test aboard GP12 – MotoGP news
Ducati rider Valentino Rossi lapped a significantly improved time aboard the GP12 during the Jerez test.
Though it is unofficial, but it is recorded close to Casey Stoner’s best lap time aboard RC212V 800cc prototype.
Rossi lapped his best effort in early 1 minute 39 seconds which is said to be sufficiently close to the Stoner best recorded time of 1 minute and 38.757 seconds with RC212V.
On the other side, Stoner’s finest effort with RC213V 1000cc prototype was not officially declared. According to an inside report, Rossi’s time with GP12 is nearly same as of Stoner’s on a 1000cc Honda machine.
Rossi debuted a full aluminium Deltabox frame in the GP12. The brand new frame was designed by British racing chassis experts FTR. Though they still deny collaboration with Ducati but reports suggest they did.
Previously, Rossi’s idea of an aluminium frame for GP11 backfired at the Motorland Aragon GP. While using aluminium remake of Ducati carbon fibre concept chassis, Rossi lost the event with a tenth place finish.
The additional problem for the Italian rider was that he had to start the race from pit lane because of using seventh engine in a single season.
Officially, a MotoGP team is allowed to use only six engines for a particular season. The violation of the regulation caused Rossi a penalty of ten seconds at the race start.
Since the winter testing, Rossi has been complaining of severe understeer on his Ducati. To fix the problem, Rossi and his crew has almost tried out everything to improve the race results but all went in vain.
Post race test at Brno showed little improvement in times by using a modified front-end component but it was not used in any race.
After failure of initial aluminium frame test with GP11.1 at Aragon, Rossi has opted to use a full aluminium Deltabox frame similar to the one used by Japanese MotoGP bikes.
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