Ducati Team duo Valentino Rossi, Nicky Hayden takes Malaysian Grand Prix positively – MotoGP news
Ducati Team riders Valentino Rossi and Nicky Hayden take the upcoming Malaysian Grand Prix as an event to prove their progress.
The 17th MotoGP event will take place at Sepang International Circuit, on October 23, 2011.
The Italian veteran has been struggling through the 2011 MotoGP season to get a good feel from his Desmosedici GP11, which eventually became GP11.1, with new chassis powered by 800cc plant. At Phillip island Rossi was 13th to start the race, but ended in crash.
Rossi said, “I like the Sepang circuit a lot, although the weather conditions are always extreme. We didn’t have much good luck in Australia, and we also had to work harder than expected on the bike’s setup. We hope to do better here in Malaysia starting on Friday.”
Coming back to the Sepang after the pre-season winter testing, it will be a help for the team to test their progress from where they started.
During the pre-season testing and since Valencia test in 2010, Rossi has been complaining a severe understeer issue on Ducati. The effort through the season was to get a better feel from front end and stabilise the bike.
Last time out as the Phillip Island, Rossi and Hayden were running to take double top-five finish for the team, but some odds ruined the effort.
After absence of Jorge Lorenzo and Ben Spies both from factory Yamaha, Hayden was able to take a ride on second position in the race.
However, he lacked the pace to defend his position and dropped to seventh across the finish line. The Kentucky rider was sixth on the grid.
Rossi has only been able to capture single podium finish at third place in Le Mans event.
On the other hand, the Italian’s teammate Hayden has also collected only one podium finish at Jerez in wet conditions.
Kentucky Kid said, “The conditions in Malaysia are typically hot and steamy, very different from what we had at Phillip Island on Sunday. The Sepang circuit has a good mix of everything, so you need the bike to does everything well.”
Both riders like to race on the Sepang circuit and anticipate higher temperatures with unpredictable weather, somewhat like Phillip Island.
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