ROSSI FACING UPHILL BATTLE TO WIN TITLE AT MOTEGI
Gauloises Yamaha rider Valentino Rossi faces a difficult
task at Motegi tomorrow and he aims for his twelfth consecutive
podium finish this season. The Italian starts from his worst
grid position since the start of the year after setting the
eleventh fastest time in this afternoon’s single qualifying
session, whilst his team-mate Colin Edwards is also expecting
a tough race as he lines up two places behind the reigning
World Champion in thirteenth. After two practice days beset
by unexpected setbacks, Rossi squeezed every possible second
out of the hour long afternoon session before launching his
qualifying attack. However, as the time ran down he was unable
to beat the chequered flag for one final attempt on a qualifying
tyre and could only look on as he slipped further down the
order with other riders posting their fastest times of the
session. Both Rossi and Edwards knocked over a second off
their times from yesterday but it was not enough to challenge
for a top placing on an ultra-competitive grid. Loris Capirossi
(Ducati) will start from pole position after setting a new
record time of 1’46.363 ahead of John Hopkins (Suzuki)
and Marco Melandri (Honda).
VALENTINO ROSSI (11th – 1’47.563; 24
laps)
“This morning we made some good progress with the setting
of the bike and we were quite fast, but in the afternoon we
went in the wrong direction and it was probably our worst
session of the season. Michelin has done a very good job to
come up with a competitive race tyre but unfortunately we
weren’t able to get the best out of it today. In the
end we had a bit of bad luck, running out of time when we
tried to change the rear tyre a couple of minutes from the
end. Anyway, tomorrow we will go back to the setting we had
this morning and use the extra data we gathered in the afternoon
to try and make some more improvements, although I think all
the riders can only dream about the pace Capirossi had today.
The last time I was so far back on the grid was at Qatar last
year but I made a lot of positions up over the first four
laps so I will try to do that again, only this time finish
the race!”
COLIN EDWARDS (13th – 1’47.678; 24 laps)
“We actually went forward with the setting of the bike
today and between turns four and nine we are good. The problems
are the sections before and after that, with the long straights
and heavy braking. We’re going from 300km/h down to
almost zero, basically, and I don’t have enough feeling
on the rear. If you are a couple of inches off the line into
those corners then you lose some vital tenths. Usually the
bike is more forgiving than this but for some reason we’re
struggling with it here and this is the worst circuit for
it to happen. We’ll see what we can work out in the
morning but whatever happens it isn’t going to be an
easy race starting from so far back.”
DAVIDE BRIVIO – GAULOISES YAMAHA TEAM DIRECTOR
“Today just goes to show that this sport is not easy.
It is always full of surprises, with top quality opposition,
and you can never relax. Both our riders are in a difficult
situation but it will be very interesting to see how the team
reacts. We have had tough Saturdays already this season but
we have good engineers and they don’t stop working right
up until the start of the race. It looks like it will be a
difficult but interesting day tomorrow!”
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