Five-times MotoGP world champion Valentino Rossi may have been toppled by Dani Pedrosa during the third and final day of testing at Jerez, but the Italian heads for a well earned winter break satisfied with the progress of his new 800cc Yamaha.

Rossi and team-mate Colin Edwards spent Thursday continuing with general development work on Yamaha's 2007 motorcycle - testing different chassis, new suspension settings and a variety of new tyres for Michelin under sunny Spanish skies.

Rossi set a best time of 1min 40.123secs on his 69th and final lap of the day, nearly half a second under his own (990cc) official lap record pace, but 0.213secs behind factory Honda rider Pedrosa. Nevertheless, The Doctor was comfortably ahead of third place Marco Melandri, plus the leading Suzukis and Ducatis.

"We had a very good test today; it's been very productive for us because we were able to check many different things for our new bike," declared Rossi. "We continued to test tyres with Michelin in order to find the correct direction for their development and we also kept working with the chassis and were able to try some different suspension settings. We've got some very good information for the Yamaha engineers and now they will work hard over the winter in order to have everything ready for the next test in January. The weather was good today, warm and sunny and in these conditions it was fun to ride on this track, which is one of my favourites. This has been an important test and I am really pleased with the level that we have got to in a short space of time. Of course we still have a lot of work to do, but now it's finally the end for this year and it's time to have a rest so we can come back ready to fight in January!"

Team-mate Edwards was seventh fastest on the unofficial timesheets after a best lap of 1min 41.254secs.

"I had a small technical problem near the end of the day so I had to stop a little bit early, but other than that it's been another good day all round," stated Colin. "We tested quite a lot more front tyres but honestly the best tyre package we found was what we tried first thing in the morning straight out of the box; that felt pretty good! Other than that we just kept on playing around with the general set-up, trying to learn as much as possible about the new bike.

"We tried a different chassis today, it's one Valentino's been testing and it's definitely the best one so far. We weren't really looking for times but we ran pretty consistently in the low 41's all day and I definitely felt like I could have found a bit more if I'd needed to push hard. Overall it's been a really good test and I am pretty excited about the new bike; we've come on in leaps and bounds in just the six days I've ridden it. Now I am heading home and looking forward to a nice relaxing Christmas with the family before we get going again in January!"

"We've been able to do a great job throughout these November tests and everyone has worked very hard," added team director Davide Brivio. "All three tests have been very important for us in order to get as much information as possible for Yamaha to work with over the winter, the engineers have done a good job with the bike and now they will put everything together over the break. In January we will have our final 2007 bikes and then we can start our real preparation for the long season ahead."

The winter testing ban will start on December 1 and last until January 20, 2007.