Valentino Rossi still held back by his shoulder problems – MotoGP news
Several times MotoGP World Champion, Valentino Rossi will be running his first season with Marlboro Ducati Team starting from the first season race on coming Sunday, March 20, 2011.
Rossi was the fourth top rider on Ducati GP11 to end the last and final test session of winter testing. The Italian finished at 13th place on the final time sheet of the night. He also had to face another accident on the last night. Rossi
is working hard to enhance the Ducati Desmosedici GP11. It became hard for the Doctor to speed up his pace as his shoulder is still not in full strength.
Rossi also felt that it was a tough challenging night as the weather as totally on other side of preferable, as the sand storm hit the track before the test started its final night.
The track was left with a layer of sand leaving it with difficult conditions for the riders, the difficulty was added by an accident Rossi had to face, when he slipped on a white line. Still having some fate on his side he just fell and had no injuries.
However, the real test was about an hour and a half on the countdown, Rossi felt that he could not push hard further to pace-up, as his shoulder lost the strength after such intense test nights. It was bit disturbing after Rossi managed to drop some
time off his lap times.
“We didn’t even mount the two soft tires that we had. I started on a long run, but I stopped because I was losing tenths lap after lap. Let’s say that we’re not as far back as it looks, although we still have a lot of work to do, regarding both the
bike and myself, because the shoulder is evidently not yet able to bear two such intense days of testing. Between now and Thursday, I’ll do some light exercise and have it massaged, and then we’ll see,” he said.
Nicky Hayden finished on ninth place on the final night of the last test session under floodlights at Qatar. He was just a second slower than his ex-teammate Casey Stoner on his Repsol Honda.
Hayden said, “It started dying down about the time we started, though, and they did a good job of cleaning the track. We tried some different options and got a little bit better, but not like we really wanted to.”
Hayden did couple of long runs on soft and hard tyres getting some decent lap times out of it. Like his teammate, Hayden too had to face an accident on turn 2 as he lost traction on his front-end. Many other riders have also gone down on the same point.
“Anyway, that’s enough testing, because this weekend it will really mean something. We know it’s going to be a tough one, because everyone is pushing so hard, but we’ll do our best to come in here and make a good showing,” he said.
Thursday will be the testing day for the first season opener race this weekend.
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