Marlboro Ducati's Valentino Rossi has admitted this evening the new and much -vaunted aluminium chassis has fixed none of the problems he has been having this season and they may have to go back to the drawing board once again to understand their problems more clearly.
Rossi came from a pitlane start to finish in tenth place during today's Motorland Aragon MotoGP race but instead of having difficulties with front-end grip on corner entry, Rossi's rear tyre started to spin on lap two and was 'destroyed' with eight laps left to go when he was re-passed by rookie Cal Crutchlow.
"It was a difficult race, we expect have a bit better pace and I lose a lot in the last eight laps as I have a lot of problem with the rear tyre, maybe something wrong happened with it, the tyre was completely destroyed at the end and I have to slow down because I had a lot a lot of vibration and it was very scary to ride the bike. Already from the second lap I had an amount of spin that didn't show in the practice," said The Doctor, speaking to bikesportnews.com.
"With the right rear tyre we could not be fast like we expect or like we want. Already from the second lap I had an amount of spin that didn't show in the practice. We are still working in a lot of different ways, start ing with the things that need less time but it looks like we don't fix a lot we continue to be quite slow apart from some good races we are not constant and it looks like we don't fix the problem so we have to concentrate to work hard to understand exactly the way to work for the feeling with the bike because I am not able to be fast as I want or ride like I want.
"We are worried about the rear grip here because if you look, Nicky was 25 seconds faster last year than this year - this is the bigger question mark. The feeling with the front is not so bad. I am quite good in braking and entry but I remain slow in the change of direction and rear grip was the main issue all weekend. It looks like after a lot of races we don't fix nothing so maybe we don't understand the real problem."
