'Emotional' Rossi samples Honda's future.

The latest test session for Honda's 4 stroke GP machine, the RC211V, took place at the Suzuka yesterday (August 7) where Valentino Rossi became the first Grand Prix rider to get a taste of Honda's future.

The test was interrupted by poor weather, which saw continuous rain during the morning clear up at 2:25 pm - and then fall again later in the afternoon, which forced Valentino to finish the test sooner than he wished.

With the rain lasting until lunchtime Honda changed the programme for the day and Rossi took to the track in the afternoon. After a few laps on the RC211V he returned to the pits to give project leader Heijiro Yoshimura, and his engineering staff, his initial impression of the machine.

Rossi made his wishes known to the test team who prepared the machine set-up to suit his riding style and he went out again. However, due to the changeable weather the test was stopped at 5.00 pm.

"It was quite a big emotion to test the new Honda GP machine," said Vale. "Because it's the beginning of a new 'Era' and I was very excited to test the four-stroke V5. Due to the rain the track was wet and I rode the bike only in the afternoon but the time was enough to understand the character of this bike. Of course we are still at the beginning of the development and we have to work a lot to be competitive but I feel we are going in the right direction and I think this project has good potential."

"Of course today I was not interested in lap times and my main task was to give information to the Honda engineers to develop the bike according to my wishes. It has been a very interesting experience," Rossi concluded.

Heijiro Yoshimura, Chief Engineer for the RC211V development, added: "The biggest problem we had today was the weather conditions. The track had dried for the afternoon session so we extended the test time but again it started to rain. Because of this we were unable to test as much as we wanted. The course condition was also slippery which held us back from judging the character of the machine completely."

"Although we had these problems, we can say that we received the necessary comments from Valentino that will help us for our next test," explained Yoshimura. "His comment were to the point which will help us for the future improvement of the machine, so we can say that we had a very good session after all."

Shinichi Itoh and Makoto Tamada also tested the machine, as they had on previous occasions - but Rossi took his place in history by being the first GP rider to test the RC211V.