Unfortunately for Valentino Rossi and his fans, tonight’s race in Qatar will not be a repeat of the historic 2004 Welkom race when he debuted on the Yamaha.
The Italian rider just managed a third row start in 9th in qualifying, despite having bettered his overall lap time, but 1.
5s behind Stoner isn’t enough even to think about contesting for a spot on the podium, even if Rossi and crewchief Jeremy Burgess are almost always able to pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat and surprise us.
According to the Ducati rider, the basic problem is still his shoulder, and loss of strength after a number of runs, with 5 to 6th tenths to be factored in on his big gap issue (there’s still that big 1 second to find) but Alex Briggs twitted that the shoulder isn’t really the problem, “So basically Qualification ran well, no cock ups, just not fast.
Riders shoulder faded at the end but not really the problem.
”“I think that without my shoulder problem, which is causing us to lose five or six tenths, we could have been on the second row today, because we were able to improve the setup by making changes that will also be important in the foreseeable future.
” said Rossi after qualifying.
“Today I was able to ride the GP11 better, but by the time we used the soft tyre at the end of the session, my strength was gone.
When I tried to do my lap time, there were some parts of the track where I just couldn’t push.
Anyway, we got an okay time and we still have some things we can try in the warm-up.
As for the race I think that as long as my shoulder lasts, we’ll be able to have a pace that’s relatively competitive, apart from the two Hondas.
We’ll see how it goes from a physical point of view in the second half of the race, after eleven or twelve laps in a row riding on the limit.
”