Movistar Yamaha’s Valentino Rossi failed to scrape into the all-important top ten in today’s opening MotoGP free practice sessions and is praying for dry conditions tomorrow so he is able to try and up his game to grab an automatic place in qualifying two.
The nine-time world champion spent a majority of the day working on a setting with the medium rear but when it came to the final push for a laptime, Rossi found he didn’t have any feeling with the soft Michelins and ended up in 12th place.
I wasn’t able to stay in the top ten, which is important because you never know what can happen the next day with the weather. At the same time we work a lot on the bike and we take some important feeling, the feeling with the bike is not so bad,” said Rossi, speaking at the track.
“At the end when I put the soft tyre we wanted to make another test, but I didn’t feel good so I wasn’t able to improve like I can, because we concentrated on testing the medium. It looks like the soft have potential and can be an option also for the race. We are not fantastic but I think my potential is better, so I hope tomorrow to have good conditions to continue to work.
“I don’t have a good balance, so I’m not so fast in the fast corners. I don’t have the feeling on the front, so we have to improve that.”
Team-mate Maverick Vinales did the opposite and worked on the soft tyre as it looks likely that Andrea Dovizoso and even Marc Marquez could choose to use it as their race option on Sunday.
