Yamaha: The championship starts now.

Despite difficulties with the 2006 M1, Camel Yamaha and reigning world champion Valentino Rossi have emerged from the first three rounds of the championship just 12-points from the top and with a victory to their credit.

However, with the next eight races taking place in just eleven weekends - starting with this Sunday's Chinese Grand Prix - Yamaha needs to quickly establish a strong base set-up, which will then require only minor modifications to be effective at each of those very different venues.

"Now we have eight races in eleven weekends, which is a lot and puts pressure on everybody," declared team director Davide Brivio. "The next three months are the core of the season and a period where the situation regarding the championship becomes much clearer. The conditions are the same for everybody so we have to make sure we work to the best of our abilities and come through with a good share of the points.

"It has been a difficult start to the season but despite the bad luck of Valentino's crash in the first round at Jerez he is still very close to the top. We're looking forward to seeing what both he and Colin are capable of when the problems are solved and hopefully that can start in China," he added.

Meanwhile, the torrential rain that fell during the inaugural event at Shanghai one year ago set the scene for one of the most impressive performances of Rossi's career but, given the choice, the world champion is hoping for a dry race on Sunday.

"Out of all the victories in my career, China last year was the one I least expected because of the problems we had with the bike during the weekend and with the rain on race day," explained Rossi, who became the all-time record points scorer in grand prix history thanks to his fourth place finish in Turkey last week - a result that put him fifth in the championship. "It was the first time I had won in the wet on the Yamaha, so it was a special victory, but this year I would definitely prefer a dry race. The 2006 version M1 didn't work as well as we had hoped in the wet practice sessions in Turkey and we need as much dry track time as possible to get the bike setting as I like it."

Like Turkey the Shanghai circuit was designed by Hermann Tilke, but it is much more similar to the German architect's other effort at Sepang in Malaysia, with tight bends and long straights that, according to Rossi, make the rider's skill in setting the bike up even more important.

"My first impressions of the circuit last year were very good but then it wasn't as much fun as I expected," said the Italian. "It is actually quite tight and technical and is very much a Formula 1 track, so all the riders have a lot of hard work to do finding the right setting for the bikes. It is not ideal for MotoGP - it is a very demanding circuit and it will test the riders and the bikes to the maximum."

Team-mate Edwards says he is unsure about what to expect in China after experiencing such mixed fortunes at each of the opening three rounds this season.

"Because we had so little dry time at Shanghai last year I think there is a big question mark for everybody about what is going to happen," said Edwards, who currently lies just ninth in the championship on 19 points. "It will be important to find a good setting for the bike as quickly as possible so that we can get some endurance testing in before the race and make sure we don't have the problems we've struggled with in previous weekends. This is a very important grand prix for us and we simply have to end it with a decent result before the championship heads back to Europe.

"The test at Istanbul on Monday was quite beneficial because it gave us an idea of the lap times we could have done in the race if we weren't interrupted by the rain on Saturday, which was encouraging, although it didn't win us any points back! We got a lot of laps in, which is what we need right now, so the engineers have some good data to work on over the next week before the race and I'm confident they can come up with something for us in China."

One of those engineers is Robert Gronlund, Edwards' Ohlins suspension technician, who knows exactly what the Texan needs this weekend... although turning such targets into reality is the difficult part.

"In some ways Shanghai is similar to Turkey but in other ways it is very different," he began. "For instance, it doesn't flow as much as that track but it does have a mixture of fast corners and very hard braking zones, so in terms of the set-up the key is again to have a good compromise - especially with the suspension. The bike needs to turn well into the slow corners because, like with the final section in Turkey, you can lose a lot of time there.

"The thing about Shanghai is that we have only been once and it was sometimes wet and sometimes dry, so we have a very limited amount of data. Really we're not worried about that though because we feel we made an important step during the test in Turkey. We have reduced the vibration problems we had at Jerez and Qatar and found a solution to the difficulties we had at Istanbul - just generally making the bike easier to ride. A lot will depend on the grip levels at Shanghai and it certainly won't be easy, but we are looking forward to it," he added.