Rossi: Title not a foregone conclusion

The Yamaha rider, who is chasing his first world title in three years, admitted that while he may be on a roll right now, he still has to finish the job over the last five races of the season.

"Yes I arrive here [at Indianapolis] with some very good races and results for me," he said. "I am in a good shape, I've ridden quite well and I have been fast recently. I am so happy.

"My advantage in the world championship is important, but we have a fight to go and the way is very long to the end. I need to stay concentrated and strong, like at the beginning of the year."

The 29-year-old said he was curious about the new Indianapolis lay-out, which has been modified from the one used by Formula One up until this year, for the inaugural Red Bull MotoGP.

"Here everybody is starting from zero," he said. "This track is quite strange, especially because it is not a track built for a bike, but for cars. They have made some modifications. So everybody is quite curious to try this track with the MotoGP bikes.

"I haven't made any laps yet [on a scooter]. I want to go after the conference. You have to understand that the first thing, like always, is the safety. We have to understand if we have enough safety around the track with our bike.

"The layout, like I said, is quite modified from the F1 track," he added. "Especially there are two corners that are very, very tight, where we expect to go around 50-60 kp/h.

"Usually the feeling with our bike when you go at that speed is quite bad because it is strange. But we will see."

Rossi, a fan of all types of motorsport, said that he had been bowled over by his first visit to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, which of course plays host to the Indy 500.

"The complex is fantastic," he said, "this place is full of history and has a lot of fascination. For sure a place that has 300,000 seats to watch the race at Indy is fantastic, but we are racing in the garden, so we have to understand if the garden is okay!

"The target is to try to improve the popularity of MotoGP in the US and in Laguna we have already been there three years and now we have a bigger crowd. It is like we are growing up here and we have a good potential. Our sport is finally here on the television so we hope to arrive here with more crowds."