Rossi: Colin and I could win tomorrow.

Former five-times MotoGP world champion Valentino Rossi is now sure that he and Yamaha will suffer no repeat of their disastrous start to the 2006 season - and that he and team-mate Colin Edwards could fight for victory if the season started tomorrow.

Although Rossi won last year's Qatar Grand Prix, then round two of the championship, it marked a rare highlight in an early season dogged by chronic chatter and unreliability issues. The vibration problems left Rossi sixth on the grid in qualifying at Losail, but he rode around the shaking on race day for his only win from the first five rounds.

Qatar will be the opening race in 2007 and, despite 'running into a few problems' during this week's official three-day test - in which he was second behind Edwards for the first two days before slipping to third, in the wake of Honda's Dani Pedrosa and Suzuki's John Hopkins, as qualifying tyres made an appearance on the final day - The Doctor now expects no nasty surprises ahead of the new season.

"It's been a good test overall, despite running into a few problems. Like I said yesterday, it's better to find the problems now so we have the chance to fix them!" said Valentino. "As I expected, the other riders have improved a lot over these three days and Colin and I weren't able to stay at the top today. Still, we're quite fast and our bike is quite good, so we're happy.

"The long run was okay, the situation with the rear tyre wasn't perfect but we knew it wasn't going to be and nothing happened that we didn't expect. Anyway, we're not worried about it and we know how to go from here. I was still able to do 1min 56.5secs [on race tyres], so I think if the race was tomorrow then we would be in a position to fight for the victory, as would Colin.

"We still have one more test in Jerez so we've got the chance to do some more good work and try to make our bike perfect for the first race. We're still working on the suspension and stability, we've talked a lot with our engineers and we've got some good ideas to try next week," the #46 revealed. "We've been sharing a lot of information in our garage between Colin and I; he's tried my settings and I've tried his which has been very helpful. Now I'm looking forward to seeing how the bike will go in Jerez next week."

Edwards, fastest at the previous Sepang test, had been hoping to complete a perfect sweep of the Qatar test - but suffered some sliding during his qualifying tyre test and saw a race simulation interrupted when John Hopkins fell heavily from his Suzuki just before lunch. Needing vital data on race-distance fuel consumption, Edwards returned to the track to try again - but without his preferred tyre.

"We were a little bit unlucky today; we wanted to finish up early so we started our long-run in the morning and it was all going well when the red flags came out after about 14 laps. I was doing pretty good times in that and was happy with how things were going, so it was pity I had to stop," said Edwards. "Anyway, our engineers needed me to have another go this afternoon as we really needed to get some information about the fuel consumption.

"Unfortunately we couldn't have the same tyre again and we had to use something a bit older, so the second long run wasn't so great, but we got all the information we needed. We tried a qualifier this morning and actually we had a tiny bit of movement with that which was a surprise after how fantastic it was in Sepang.

"I couldn't quite better my time from yesterday, when I was on race tyres," he revealed. "Valentino had a go later and I think he fixed the issue, so we're not panicking about that. It's been a really good test and I think we've got a lot of options with this bike. Now it's on to something different again in Jerez so we'll see how things go there, hopefully we can continue the good work."

The Yamaha Factory Team will now head to Jerez for the final MotoGP test on 23rd, 24th and 25th February - when the team should finally reveal its 2007 livery, expected to be based around a rumoured title sponsorship deal with car manufacturer Fiat.