Valentino Rossi was among the first riders to get on his bike at Valencia yesterday after the track was opened, and he worked tirelessly with his team and Filippo Preziosi to carry out the tests requested by the engineers, who will continue working on the 2012 project tomorrow in Bologna.

Once again, official test rider Franco Battaini substituted for Nicky Hayden, who has an injured scaphoid in his right wrist, though the American stayed at the track and followed the test from the Ducati Team garage. Hayden will likely undergo a small operation in the coming days to speed up his recovery.

Rossi was sixth fastest with a best lap of 1:33.332 riding the twin-spar Desmosedici.

“These were two important days of testing because we needed to collect a lot of data for the next few months of work, which will be crucial,” Rossi said. “The positives of this bike are certainly the engine, which I like, and the fact that it handles a bit better than the previous one.

“It’s definitely more fun, in part because you can get sideways more. The frame isn’t bad, but it needs work. We have to improve the braking, because I need to brake harder and later, and we need to improve traction under acceleration.

“Filippo has many ideas, and now we have a little time to apply them before next year’s tests.”

Filippo Preziosi said that the team will continue to work hard during the pre-season.

“We were lucky to have sun and generally much better conditions than what we had over the race weekend, and this allowed us to take full advantage of both test days,” he said. “Unfortunately, Nicky wasn’t able to ride, but at least he’ll have plenty of time to recover before the first test at Sepang next year.

“We asked Valentino, Franco (Battaini) and the other Ducati riders to carry out a series of comparisons between different solutions, as there are still chassis parameters that we have to define for the project we’re working on.

“It has been really hard work, but we’ve collected a lot of information that we’ll now use for the design that we’ll be doing in the coming weeks.”