Valentino Rossi worried about lack of pace in Qatar

Valentino Rossi found the final pre-season MotoGP Test in Qatar much more challenging than his new young teammate

Valentino Rossi (Movistar Yamaha MotoGP)

While Vinales continued to take to the YZR-M1 like a duck to water, and confirm his form by yet again proving outright fastest, as he has done in every MotoGP Test of 2017, Rossi was expressing worry about his lack of pace on the YZR-M1.

Unable to further improve on his time as the temperatures went down, Rossi settled for eleventh position on the final day‘s results, 0.855s from his teammate.

However, Rossi ended up in sixth place in the combined standings, thanks to the 1‘54.732s lap that he set on day two. Still, the Italian veteran expressed worry about his lack of pace on day three.

Valentino Rossi

“Today was more difficult compared to yesterday. We started with the same bike to continue our programme, but unfortunately I didn’t have the same feeling and the same speed. It looks like the condition of the track changed a bit and we were unable to improve.

“I didn’t have the same feeling as yesterday and I was a bit slower. We put in a lot of effort to go a bit slower.

“I think we are still not ready, we don’t understand 100% how to make the bike work at the maximum.

“We are a bit worried because at the end except for some good laps the winter tests were very difficult.

“So now we have to speak together and try to be stronger for the first race. I hope to be faster and more competitive.”

Massimo Meregalli – Yamaha MotoGP Team Director

This test has been crucial for us in order to prepare for the first round of the season and all in all we are satisfied. After the very positive results yesterday, we resumed our work on the bikes’ set-up today, mainly focusing on race simulations. We finalised our testing programme by making some final adjustments to the settings as Maverick completed a very strong longer run, while Vale had to cut his run short. Maverick kept up his fast lap times over the last three days, during both the time attacks and the race simulation, and this gives us great confidence for the first race. After yesterday‘s good performance, Valentino encountered some problems with his bike‘s set-up today. His engineers will draw a comparison between yesterday and today‘s endeavours to find out what amendments to the setting did and didn‘t work. Having concluded this last test, we feel eager to start the season in two weeks’ time.”