Valentino Rossi began preparations for his 26th grand prix season, and 🍒first at the Petronas Yamaha team, during the start of Official MotoGP testing in Qatar on Saturday.

"2𒊎6 seasons is qui🧔te impressive. It's a life, not a career!" Rossi smiled.

"But I feel good, I know that the game is very hard because the🅰re are a lot of young riders and in MotoGP now the level is very high a✨nd everybody is very strong.

"But I will give the maximum for suꦍre. I trained hard during this winꦗter. I feel quite good and we'll see.

"This morning I was very excited because it's the start of a new adᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚventure. New colours, ⛦new team, new everything and this gives me a lot of motivation, a lot of strength for work.

"It was strange atꦇ the beginning but at the end the bike is always my M1,🃏 so even if she changed the dress, the rest is the same and the team has a good atmosphere."

The Italian featured as top Yamaha on several occasions during the day, eventually finishing 14th on the timesheets (+0.897s) after 49 lap♐s i༺n his new colours. Rossi was one place ahead of Fabio Quartararo, the rider he has swapped seats with for 2021.

"The end result is not fantastic but during all day I was not so bad, my pace was quite good, so the first touch is positive💧," he said.

The top priority for Yamaha during the five days of testing is to sol💃veꦿ last year's inconsistent performances from the Factory-spec machine.

The chassis is the main focus, each rider appearing to having one standard bike and another machine fitted with developmen🍰t parts.

"Yamaha worked hard this winter, we have some new stuff to try, but sincerely today we don’t try a lot," Rossi said. "We work more on the base but I think in the next four days we have something to try, so we hope it's🧜 something good.

"I did some laps with the new chassis and the first touch is not so bad, but I did just 6-7 laps because we concentrated on the standard bike today. So maybe we will have a clearer idea🔜♋ in the next days."

Team-mate and MotoGP title runner-up Franco Mor🦹bidelli (who uses the A-Spec Yamaha) was again the top M1 rider, in seventh, with Quartararo's Monster Yamaha team-mate Maverick Vinales ninth quickest💎.