Rossi admits he is ‘not strong’ enough for victory challenge
Valentino Rossi admits he is not ‘strong enough’ to fight for the MotoGP win at Phillip Island on Sunday after qualifying seventh.
The eight-time Phillip Island race winner across all three classes had to contest Q1 after rain in third practice denied him the chance to improve on 12th from a tricky Friday.
Rossi eased through Q1 with a 1m29.346s, but was only able to improve by a tenth of a second in the second 15-minute segment to a 1m29.203s to put his factory Yamaha seventh.
The Italian revealed he was not comfortable with the set-up of the bike, not helped by mixed conditions in practice stopping him from fully evaluating numerous chassis set-up changes.
“I was able to arrive at a good laptime early, but after I was too much at the limit in corner entry and wasn’t able to improve on the last lap,” explained Rossi, who was second after starting 15th last year.
“I am not very happy about the setting of the bike; we have to try to make it better.
“And also we have to wait and see about the weather. We hope that at 4pm tomorrow it will be good like today and we will try to make a good race.
“We modify a lot of things, so for sure when you have these mixed conditions it’s a bit difficult because we don’t have a lot of experience with this type of bike.”
Tyre choice remains an unknown at present for Rossi, and with track temperatures expected to be low at race time on Sunday the soft compound is an option.
However, Phillip Island is notoriously difficult on tyres, and this has left Rossi wary of running the softer option.
“It’s a big question for everbody I think, because with the softer tyre everybody has better potential, they are faster,” he said.
“But for 27 laps it’s critical. It will depend very much on the conditions, on the temperature.
“Tomorrow it will be very crucial to make the right tyre choice, front and especially rear.
“We want to have a good bike, but also save the rear tyre because the race is long.”