Valentino Rossi impresses, Nicky Hayden still struggling – Qatar GP, MotoGP news
Valentino Rossi ended on fifth place at the Free Practice session on Thursday evening.
Rossi hit his best time of 1:56.479 seconds on the clock. Although it was a great evening for the Marlboro Ducati Team but Nicky Hayden had to improve a lot. The FP session is in preparation for the Sunday’s Commercial Grand Prix of Qatar at the Losail
Circuit.
In spite of having a shoulder problem, Rossi still managed to improve his time and was impressed by the performance of his Desmosedici GP11.
If the Ducati has to run fast during Sunday’s race, they will have to cut five tenths of a second to come up to the challenge. The team looks forward to improve in next FP session, and also needs some other areas to improve. Rossi feels he has not
to push hard on his GP11 and has better control in manoeuvrability.
On the third and last test session at Losail circuit Rossi had his first accident on Ducati, followed by another accident on the second test night, but had no severe injuries. At the final moments Rossi was out of energy from at his shoulder and could
not push further to speed up.
“We modified the setup a little compared to the test, and we immediately found it to be better, to the point that within just a few laps. The last run was particularly positive and my final lap time, done with a hard tyre that had 19 laps on it, was
my best. It was just a bit more than a tenth off second place,” he said.
Nicky Hayden had a good start at the practice session and soon he touched his mark set until the end of the practice night. By the end of the night he cloud not run fast as required but still he has many options to gain the pace in the upcoming practice
sessions.
Hayden closed his session at 11th place with a lap time of 1:56.910 seconds. But as the other riders have improved their speeds Hayden was not much happy to slow on the track.
“It was certainly nice to be back in action that counted a bit more. We had a bit of wind, and the temperature wasn’t really high, but for as much sand as we’ve seen blowing around the last couple of days, the track was in great condition,” he said.
Thursday, March 17, 2011 was also important for the Italian Ducati team as the Italy celebrated its 150th anniversary of the country’s unification.
The redesigned fairings of the red-white striped Ducati Desmosedici GP11 rode by Valentino Rossi and Nicky Hayden carry a specially designed official logo for this event, displaying three Italian flags representing the three jubilees of 1911, 1961,
and 2011 revealing generation’s link.
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