Rossi ups the pace

Valentino Rossi has continued to improve his times in the second free practice session at the Dutch round of the MotoGP world championship, in Assen.

At the end of the session Rossi was riding nearly four-tenths of a second faster than in yesterday’s first qualifying, setting a new circuit best lap in the process with a 2:00.111 lap.

There were no other Hondas in the top seven with Ducati’s Loris Capirossi finishing exactly 0.6 seconds behind Rossi closely followed by Ducati team-mate Troy Bayliss.

Colin Edwards just missed out on the third fastest time finishing just 0.002 seconds behind Bayliss with a time of 2:00.786.

The Yamahas of Carlos Checa and Alex Barros came in sixth and seventh fastest with Tohru Ukawa on a Honda RCV in eighth.

Max Biaggi was down in 11th with a 2:01.556 unable to match yesterday’s blistering time of 2:00.677.

Times:

1) Valentino Rossi 2:00.111, 2) Loris Capirossi 2:00.711, 3) Troy Bayliss 2:00.784, 4) Colin Edwards 2:00.786, 5) Shinya Nakano 2:00.936, 6) Carlos Checa 2:01.095, 7) Alex Barros 2:01.297, 8) Tohru Ukawa 2:01.480, 9) Nicky Hayden 2:01.530, 10) Sete Gibernau 2:01.534, 11) Max Biaggi 2:01.556, 12) Noriyuki Haga 2:01.619, 13) Marco Melandri 2:01.809, 14) Olivier Jacque 2:02.058, 15) John Hopkins 2:02.072, 16) Makoto Tamada 2:02.912, 17) Yukio Kagayama 2:03.207, 18) Alex Hofmann 2:03.423, 19) Andrew Pitt 2:03.668, 20) Ryuichi Kiyonari 2:04.644, 21) Jeremy McWilliams 2:04.722, 22) Garry McCoy 2:05.151, 23) Nobuatsu Aoki 2:06.455,

To comment on this story click the link on the right to go to our GP discussion board.