Valentino Rossi has said that a mistake in timing during qualifying cost him a shot at going into Q2 in MotoGP qualifying at Aragon.

The Italian is in the midst of a dreadful 2018 and found himself struggling once again after ending the three free practice sessions eighteenth overall, the exact same spot he qualified in, although Franco Morbidelli’s six spot ban did promote him to seventeenth.

“In the Q1, we make some confusion, I waited too much and I wasn’t able to make the lap,” said ‘the Doctor’.

“But anyway also if I make the lap I think I can improve two or three position but unfortunately I don’t have the speed for entering the Q2. In reality, I decide to bet everything because I know that to go into Q1, I need a lap behind somebody. And I waited. But unfortunately, we waited too much.”

Rossi said that he and his Movistar Yamaha team aren’t doing anything different to usual this weekend; just unfortunately for him nothing is working this weekend.

“Unfortunately practice by practice we have the feeling, what we can do in the box during the weekend, our normal work of set-up, doesn’t change our problem, because the feeling with the bike remains always difficult, and also the speed doesn’t improve,” he said.

“For tomorrow, we try to do something else, we try to modify the bike in another way, and we see if we can make a better race and I will try to take some points, I think that this can be the target for tomorrow.”