MotoGP Emilia Romagna: Rossi: “Everyone is more competitive than last week”

Valentino Rossi finished today’s test in fifteenth overall, suffering from tiredness and bike problems.

Today was not the day Valentino Rossi was hoping for, finishing FP1 in a low P17 and FP2 in P12, putting him in P15 overall today, not where The Doctor hoped to be, especially after a positive race weekend last weekend.

He was used as a ‘test mule’ during the test this week, using Yamaha’s new exhaust, Rossi put in a total of 90 laps, commenting on how this can affect him he said, “It is physically hard because Tuesday we had a test and did a lot of laps and at my age, you need more days of rest,” this is coming from a race weekend, into a test with a few days rest back into another race weekend.

Rossi has said he still feels good on the bike but Yamaha are still having problems with the bike, “The feeling for me is still good, but we need to work on the bike and improve our pace to find something for me and something to be stronger.

Everyone is more competitive than last week, a lot of riders improved their bike and their settings, we need to find a way to go faster.”

“Today we worked a lot on the bike, we tried to get better grip, we are not ready still, at the end of FP2 we are out of the top 10 and by a lot,  but everyone is in the same 10th [of a second] so it is very close.”

However, he is not happy overall with the bike, aiming to improve in FP3 and FP4 to be able to qualify in a good position tomorrow, “I am still not happy [with today], so we must continue to work and try again tomorrow.

It’s hard [to be so far down the results] but this is MotoGP, MotoGP this year is very competitive and it changes every session and every day, everyone works very hard to improve. Anyway, we will manage and I expect everyone to be more competitive this weekend.”

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