Following the MotoGP tests at Sepang last Thursday and Friday, Jorge Lorenzo and Valentino Rossi jumped on a plane and headed to Bangkok, Thailand to take part in a two day promotional visit for Thailand Yamaha Motor.

The two Fiat Yamaha riders visited the Yamaha Riders Club, where they greeted Yamaha VIP customers and then took part in an exclusive TV interview with the Thailand Night Show.

On Sunday, Rossi and Lorenzo in front of almost 10,000 fans unveiled the new Yamaha Nuovo 150cc scooter with both riders taking a spin on special 46 and 99 replica versions of the new model. Before leaving, Rossi and Lorenzo had the chance to meet Mr. Nagashima, President of Thailand Yamaha Motor, and Mr. Yanagi, who will be Yamaha Motor Company’s new president, starting from 25th March.

Continue reading: Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo Visit Thailand

We’ve got more exclusive pics from the final day of testing from Motoblog’s Lallai who was with the Fiat on the Web team in Sepang and all the riders quotes.

Valentino Rossi - 1st 2′00″925 (32 laps)

“After yesterday this second day has been very good as well, even though we lost a few hours to the rain, and the end we were still able to finish all our work. We worked on the new bike to find a better setting and I was happy to be the fastest overall - even though this is just testing this is important for me! At the next test we will have a few more new things but we’re already happy because we’re fast and strong. There is room to improve of course; Sepang is always a good track for the Yamaha so we will have to wait until Qatar to get a better understanding of our level, but we have made a great start.”

Casey Stoner - 2nd 2′01″320 (44 laps)

“We are quite happy with the test. Today didn’t start really well because of the rain and the wet track, which set us back a few hours, but when it finally did dry out we were able to make some progress. We have definitely improved the set-up of the bike, trying some different things with the swingarm. The lap times are still not where we want them to be and we have to work on taking another couple of tenths off on hard tyres, but to be consistently doing 2′01.9 or 2′02.0 laps is a decent pace. Considering that we are using a different engine to the one we’ve had for the last three years and some other new parts that we still need to get the best out of we certainly can’t be unhappy with where we’re at. There is work to do but we have two more test sessions before the season starts for real. In general I am really pleased with how it’s gone.”

Jorge Lorenzo - 3rd 2′01″320 (60 laps)

“I felt much better today and I was able to be fast straight away. It wasn’t a big problem yesterday, it’s just that after such a long break I forget how to ride a little bit! I need a bit of time, but it was much better today. I’m happy about my performance and about my feeling with the new bike. Yamaha have made good improvements without changing the best parts of the bike and this is the best way. They have made some good modifications to the chassis and the engine and this has already improved our pace. We don’t have many days on the bike until the start of the season so we will make the most of the time here next month to continue our good work.”

Continue reading: MotoGP Sepang Test Friday: More Pics and Rider Quotes

The Fiat Yamaha Team with Valentino Rossi have teamed up with Legambiente (an enviromental association) to auction off the tail section of his 2009 Yamaha M1 with the Forza Abruzzo stickers to finance a mobile laboratory for emergencies in the earthquake hit area.

“There’s a bit of Abruzzo in my ninth world title,” said Rossi “I’ve never forgotten the images of the earthquake and the immense tragedy that followed. This is a way to tell the people that we haven’t forgetten, and we want to support the reconstruction of the city of Aquila and the neighboring towns destroyed by the quake. It’s also an invitation to focus on young people, on students to help this land and its extraordinary people and get them up and running again. We’re going to be auctioning the two parts of the tail section of the Yamaha that I used in Qatar. In that race in April, to show my closeness to the population affected by the earthquake, I put the ‘Forza Abruzzo‘ sticker on my Yamaha.”

The tail section has been cut in two and both pieces have been autographed by the 9 times World Champion. If you’re interested in having a piece of a Yamaha GP bike head over to the Forza Abruzzo website and make your bid. Auction ends April 5th at 10am.

Continue reading: Yamaha M1 'Forza Abruzzo' Tail to be Auctioned

In the final day of MotoGP testing, and after a very wet start in the morning that saw only eleven riders risking it out on track, Nicky Hayden came out on top, followed by Marco Melandri and Hector Barbera and Jorge Lorenzo.

By 2pm, the track dried out and all the ‘aliens’ were back in action and business was as usual. Jorge Lorenzo hit the top of the chart, with Valentino Rossi, who sat out the morning session and with only nine laps on his Yamaha in second place and Casey Stoner, who also sat out the morning, in third.

Marco Simoncelli highsided in the fast part of the circuit, picking up some grazing his left thigh and elbow and cuts on his little finger. After a visit to the Clinica Mobile, Simoncelli was back on track on his second bike.

Ben Spies who seems to have gotten over his jet lag was in fourth, a little less than 6 tenths of second from Lorenzo.

Continue reading: MotoGP Sepang Test Friday: Valentino Rossi On Top Again

To accompany today’s riders quotes, we’ve got a batch of pics from today’s MotoGP test in Sepang, some official and some from Motoblog who has its own blogger who’s reporting directly from Malaysia.

Valentino Rossi - 1st 2′01″411 Laps: 54

“Today was very important because this year we have just six days of testing in which to set the bike, so we can not waste any time. This first day was very positive, we tried the new bike for 2010, with a different chassis and a new engine, which can do more kilometres, and it is quite fast. Yamaha has worked very well over the winter. Now we need to spend time on setting some electronics and other things. This is only the start but it seems we’re already in good shape.”

Casey Stoner - 2nd 2′01″902 Laps: 42 laps

“This first day was a bit difficult to understand: we started off with a setting that was quite good and that allowed us to make reasonably good lap times. We thought we would improve as the day went on but we had a few problems with chatter. We tried a lot of different combinations trying to make the bike feel a little bit better but we couldn’t really get an improvement. To be honest it was difficult to work out why because the track conditions were particularly difficult — it was so hot that it was actually hard to understand if you were make an improvement on the bike or not. In any case I’m really happy with the new engine, I think that with the other one we would have struggled more. Now the bike in general feel very good, very balanced and I’m happy with it. Hopefully the weather will be a little cooler tomorrow so that we can understand better if the changes we try are the right ones”.

Continue reading: MotoGP Sepang Test Thursday: Pics and Rider Quotes

Part of the duties of a MotoGP rider when they launch their new season campaign is to answer a lot of questions, some interesting, some pointless.

Here’s a video of Valentino Rossi from Sepang, who talks about his training, his rivals, the six engine rule, the return of the 1000cc, Formula 1, his future and as always his eventual retirement.

Continue reading: Video Interview with Valentino Rossi at Sepang

The MotoGP riders are finally on track, shaking off the winter blues and back in action in a hot -32°C and humid - 60% Sepang, and fortunately the weather forecasters were partially wrong, because it started to rain only in the final minutes of the test session.

Valentino Rossi was the fastest in today’s testing with Casey Stoner just under 0.5 sec behind the reigning World Champion and Colin Edwards, on his Tech 3 Yamaha, posting the third best time. They were the only three riders that were able to go under the 2′02 mark, but only earlier in the afternoon before the heat began to take its toll on the riders.

Lap Times at 3pm:

1 #46 Valentino Rossi 2′01″411
2 #27 Casey Stoner 2′01″902 +0″491
3 #5 Colin Edwards 2′01″932 +0″521
4 #65 Loris Capirossi 2′02″102 +0″691
5 #99 Jorge Lorenzo 2′02″596 +1.185
6 #4 Andrea Dovizioso 2′02″630 +1.219
7 #69 Nicky Hayden 2′02″792 +1.381
8 #36 Mika Kallio 2′03″078 +1.667
9 #26 Dani Pedrosa 2′03″176 +1.765
10 #11 Ben Spies 2′03″ 302 +1.891
11 #41 Aleix Espargaro 2′03″412 +2.001
12 #19 Alvaro Bautista 2′03″558 +2.147
13 #58 Marco Simoncelli 2′03″563 +2.152
14 #33 Marco Melandri 2′03″609 +2.198
15 #7 Hiroshi Aoyama 2′03″651 +2.240
16 #40 Hector Barbera 2′03″657 +2.242
17 #14 Randy De Puniet 2′03″722 +2.311
18 #100 Yamaha T 2′05″732 +4.321
19 #101 Yamaha O 2′06″206 +4.795

Continue reading: MotoGP Sepang Test: Thursday -Riders in Action - Rossi Leads

The Fiat Yamaha Team officially presented their new Yamaha YZR-M1 and Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo who will contest in the 2010 MotoGP season.

For the fourth consecutive year Fiat will be sponsoring the team and there’s also new sticker slogan/message on the tail section of the bikes, which reads Semakin Di Depan, which means One Step Ahead in Indonesian, which shows the importance of the Asian market for Yamaha company.

Continue reading: Fiat Yamaha 2010 Unveiling

The 2010 Fiat Yamaha Team launch will be presented at the Sepang circuit on February 4th, where the official unveiling of the new YZR-M1 will take place.

Fiat on the Web has given us this little teaser to tide us over until Thursday when we’ll see the real thing.

Continue reading: MotoGP: Fiat Yamaha Team 2010 Teaser Video

Valentino Rossi’s seems to becoming popular even in the music world. After Spanish rock group Sorry Mamma’s tribute song to Rossi, we now have a UK punk band, March to the Grave who have also dedicated a song to the 9 times World Champion in their last creative effort.

Hit March to the Grave’s MySpace page here to listen to the band’s tribute to Valentino.

Source | bikesportnews

Continue reading: Punk Band Song Tribute to Valentino Rossi

Valentino Rossi is Fastweb’s (a broadband telecommunication company) testimonial and here’s the World Champion in a commercial with one of Italia’s craziest comedians Paolo Cevoli.

Cevoli, who in real life is actually a big fan of Rossi and attends several MotoGP races a year, thinks that wearing Rossi’s leathers and riding his bike will make him and his computer superfast. Unfortunately for Cevoli, he doesn’t even know where the throttle is until Rossi tells him.

Continue reading: Valentino Rossi Fastweb Commercial

Valentino Rossi’s last day of testing with the Ferrari F2008 was hampered by a heavy fog in the morning that left the Montmelò circuit damp, so the Italian hit the track with intermediate tires trying to get as much track time as possible.

In the afternoon the sun finally broke cover drying out the track and allowing the Ferrari mechanics to mount slick tires on the car. Valentino clocked up 74 laps and a fastest time of 1’21”88 on his penultimate lap of the day.

Rossi’s test was also followed by Ferrari’s Felipe Massa who will be testing on Friday. Massa is returning to F1 this season, following his near fatal accident during qualifying for the 2009 Hungarian Grand Prix.

Continue reading: Valentino Rossi concludes Ferrari Test