Under a grey sky, with a constant threat of rain that never materialized during the sessions, Valentino Rossi made the second row in Brno for the Czech GP, enjoying his best qualifying performance of the season so far.

 In addition to posting the sixth-best time overall, the Italian has steadily improved his own performance over the course of the weekend, riding consistently and at a good pace in every session.

Valentino Rossi

Since Friday morning, things have gone better here at Brno. We've managed to be faster and more competitive than normal and, most importantly, to work on the bike well, improving session by session. This afternoon we managed to do a good time attack, so were generally pretty pleased. Its important that well be able to start from the second row in the race because it makes things a little easier. The times in our group are very close, but well have to see what conditions well have tomorrow and what our race pace will be. Anyway, I like the track a lot, and if we can manage to perfect a couple more details with the setup, we can try and have some fun.