Ducati's Valentino Rossi has slipped further behind his MotoGP rivals in today's Sepang qualifying, ending in 11th pace and 1.4s slower than poleman Jorge Lorenzo - a worse performance than in winter testing at the Malaysian track.
The Doctor was only one second in arrears when the teams left the circuit in February and although Lorenzo set a new circuit best lap in the final session, Rossi is struggling with grip and chatter on the soft tyre and is a mile behind.
“We were going pretty well at a certain point this afternoon, as I was able to do some laps with the hard tyre at a low-2:02 pace. We were pretty optimistic for the end, but when we put on the soft, it triggered a lot of chatter and I wasn’t able to improve enough to be further up the grid," said the Italian.
"Anyway, we’re not too far from Hayden, Barbera, Bautista and Bradl, so we’ll see. The warm-up will be very important for choosing the tyres. With the soft, it will certainly be necessary to slow down a lot in the second part of the race because today, it was already sliding a lot after just three or four laps.
"With the hard tyre, in theory we should suffer more at the beginning and then… we don’t know yet. Tomorrow we’ll try to understand. Finally, there’s the rain variable, which could shake everything up. We’ll see what time it comes.”
