Valentino Rossi cut his promising CatalanGP weekend short after crashing his Petronas Yamaha out of Sunday’s race after just 16 laps.

Having qualified 11th, a difficult start saw Rossi dropping down to 17th by lap three despite running ninth into the first corner. The Italian struggled to settle into a good rhythm as the pace increased due to lack of rear grip and was unable to mount the desired fight back through the pack. Circulating 13th at the halfway stage and inside the points, his race came to an abrupt end at turn 10 with nine laps left to run.

“Looks like the hard tyre of today was worse than yesterday and this morning, and I lose 0.6s per lap and I was very slow. Also in the end, I crashed because when the tyre slides like this, I get the vibration, so in the turn 10 I crashed. Anyway we expected a lot more because the pace in the practice was not too bad, is a great shame.

“From yesterday morning, I was not too bad. I always stayed in the top-10, also this morning in the warm up, we tried the hard but anyway I was quite fast, so this is important. Big delusion for the race, for sure, because from the beginning I had a lot of problems and I was very slow. I think that for us, this was a good opportunity to make a good race.

“Usually the hard needs time to arrive at temperature but this morning, at 9:30 in the morning, after two or three laps I was already in the ‘40.3 ‘40.4 and I feel comfortable so we think that we are quite sure, for the afternoon. Also the afternoon had exactly the same conditions than yesterday afternoon but I was 0.6, 0.7 slower, and at the moment we don’t understand why.

“Tomorrow for sure we will try another time the hard and the medium to understand the feeling and we have some stuff from Yamaha. So we will see tomorrow.”

With testing and development stifled by the pandemic crisis, some have questioned if more testing days are needed in a bid to catch up.

“For me the tests are enough,” Rossi spoke plainly.

“This is already the second Monday test, we will have another test in Misano and anyway we have a lot of races. I don’t think that more tests would make a lot of difference,” he concluded.