Though not feeling 100% fit, Yamaha's Valentino Rossi stuck to the same approach he had at the previous Grand Prix weekend.
The Italian rider worked diligently on his bike‘s setting in FP1, to be fully prepared for Saturday's qualifying.
Focusing on improvement, he ended the morning practice with a best time of 1'25.251s for 12th place, 0.620s from the top of the timesheets.
Once the track dried midway through FP2, the Doctor used the second session to fine-tune the balance of his bike, to match it to the Austrian circuit‘s layout and the expected weather variations for this weekend.
The Italian rider pushed hard at the end of the session to improve on his morning time by 0.368s, posting a 1'24.883s lap, for twelfth position in the FP2 results.
He ended the first day of practice in 13th place in the overall standings, 0.837s from first.
“It wasn't a very good day, we had some problems, especially this morning was a difficult practice,” Rossi said. “When I woke up this morning I also didn't feel very well, I didn't have energy, it felt like the flu, so this morning was difficult. This afternoon, unfortunately, in the end my position was not in the top-10, which was the target, but we improved the bike and we improved the feeling.”
“We're not strong, we need to make some other modification to try to be faster, but we're all very close and we are there. We need to improve, but for tomorrow we have a lot of things to try. Braking is very important, but also acceleration. I suffer a bit on acceleration because I spin a bit too much and lose time. Also in sector 3, where last year I was strong, this year I am very bad because we don't have the right balance of the bike, so for tomorrow we will try something different.”
