2008 World Champion pulls no punches in review of Saturday qualifying in Valencia.
Valentino Rossi about to leaves pits
Valentino Rossi gave a frank assessment of his first dry practice of the year at the Valencia circuit, the Saturday qualifying session in which he had immense difficulty with cornering. Such a problem has been frequently voiced by the 2008 World Champion, and has been addressed in development of the 2009 Yamaha M1 ready for preseason testing. However, for the final race of the year Rossi admits that speed has been an issue for him with any kind of tyre.
`This was one of the worst practices of the year; we´re not fast on race or qualifying tyres,´ lamented the Fiat Yamaha rider after a long debrief in the team garage. `It´s a pity, because I have a good setting but in the dry we are suffering a lot.
`I need too much time on the corners, and it is difficult to accelerate enough to increase speed.´
Consolation for Rossi comes from the fact that, for the first time in three years, he is not obliged to achieve any result in order to preserve a championship place. The Italian will nonetheless be working closely with his crew to end the season on a high.
`I have some quite big problems, and I hope that between today, the warmup and the race we can improve performance. We checked the data and understand the problem, but now we have to fix it.´
Rossi is aiming for his sixteenth podium of 2008 at the Gran Premio Parts Europe de la Comunitat Valenciana, and could achieve his tenth win of the campaign.
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