Rossi’s debut for Ducati

Added on Tuesday, November 9th, 2010 by Carole Nash Editor | No Comments

After a successful weekend at the Valencia track, Valentino Rossi has hung up his Fiat Yamaha boots and instead has been spotted making his debut for Ducati, after completing his first few laps on Ducati’s factory GP11 machine.

Rossi took to the Ducati machine just after lunchtime on Tuesday, on the first day of the Official MotoGP test at Valencia. There were plenty of onlookers at the track, fans and media alike, who were waiting all morning due to wet weather to watch Rossi make his first outing for Ducati.

The nine time world champion took to the track shortly at 12:20pm, and came out riding a plain black Desmosedici machine that was emblazoned with the number 46 on the fairing, Rossi’s trademark number. Rossi himself was also donning plain black leathers, with a luminous yellow 46 printed across the back.

For the Ducati team, the main focus of the two-day test at Valencia is to determine whether or not they should use the screamer, or big bang engine on the GP11. Rossi has a total of three different bikes available at his disposal for the test; including the Big Bang GP10, which was used by Rossi’s predecessor, Casey Stoner.

Ducati test rider Franco Battaini warmed up both versions of the bike for the former world champion, and Rossi completed a total of eight laps to get a feel for his new machine, before setting out again at 1:10pm to do a second stint on the bike. He set a best time of 1.37.329 in his initial run, which was undertaken in overcast and blustery conditions.

Rossi will debut for Ducati in the 2011 MotoGP season, after seven successful years at Yamaha.

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.