Valentino Rossi acknowledged that
Casey Stoner was in a class of his own during day one at Assen, but was happy to be leading the 'other' championship.
Rossi, a distant second to Stoner last weekend at
Donington Park, remains 45 points in front of the Australian in the world championship standings - but was left 0.732secs behind the #1 during Thursday practice for the Dutch TT.
Nevertheless, with
Dani Pedrosa - the Italian's nearest title rival - only ninth fastest, Rossi was content to be best of the rest... for now.
"Second place this afternoon is not bad at all, considering that this morning we had some problems," said Rossi, who was sixth in FP1. "This afternoon we made some modifications and we started to improve quite a bit.
"We are still struggling in some points of the track however and this shows in the gap that we still have to Stoner. During this afternoon's session we understood some interesting things, which we hope will help us tomorrow. Today, however, it seems like I am the leader of the 'other' championship!" joked Valentino, who scored a memorable victory over Stoner at Assen one year ago.
"Compared to the majority of the field in fact our pace is very good, the problem is Casey!" underlined team manager Davide Brivio. "In order to fight with him it's clear that we're going to need to work even harder and improve even more, so this is what we will do. It seems that we now have a good base setting so now we will just try to make the next step."
Meanwhile, Rossi's rookie Fiat Yamaha team-mate
Jorge Lorenzo finished the day just 14th in the combined standings after struggling for front-end feeling
