Ducati rider Valentino Rossi crashes during testing – MotoGP news
Sunday started the last pre-season test at Losail, Qatar and the opening race is coming closer on March 20, 2011.
The riders hit the track to test their machines and sharpened their skills for the season start. The Marlboro Ducati Team duo Valentino Rossi and Nicky Hayden performed steadily and progressive on the first night of testing. The track conditions were
fairly suitable and with temperatures about 23 degrees.
The Ducati duo was placed decently above ten places and feels determined to improve further on the second final night of testing. Unfortunately, Rossi was running good, within a second from the lead on his new GP11, but had to see an accident after
losing the front end while entering the corner.
Valentino Rossi was doing well enough for the first night. The Italian was enjoying the ride, as his shoulder was able to take the stress. By standing on eight place he was he was far down in positions and time distance, but it was fair with a used
tyre.
The team engineers have put more effort to change the settings for much more suitable results but still lack some manoeuvring which costs time. The team will try some new settings tomorrow.
“As for the shoulder, I’m happy because I have a little more strength, and that enables me to ride better. Today I also had my first crash on a Ducati, which I naturally did intentionally because after a while, you have to do a little fall…. All joking
aside, I entered too quickly and lost the front: I was able to pick it up and avoid crashing while I was on the track, but I dropped it in the gravel—no big deal though,” Rossi said.
Continuing the dominancy, the Hondas were the pace leaders in the first night of testing. The trio of RC212V was united again covering the top-three places in following positions: Dani Pedrosa, Casey Stoner and Hiroshi Aoyama. Ben Spies and Jorge Lorenzo
were the closet riders to run behind the Hondas. Third teammate of Repsol Honda team Andrea Dovizioso was standing on seventh place above the the Ducati riders.
Nicky Hayden, “Right out of the gate, it wasn’t too bad, and then we were up against a wall for a while. The team made one little change with ride height and I was able to get a decent lap time and get consistent.”
Hayden feels lack of traction at the front end, at some points of the track, whereas some points are going good with it. If the Ducatis are able to cope up with that problem, then the lap times can be significantly dropped down. The Marlboro Ducati
team is doing better than Malaysia but still needs to go faster to steal the show.
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