MotoGP championship leader Valentino Rossi ended the first day of practice at Indianapolis almost a second off the pace with a catalogue of handling woes making it difficult for him to change direction on his factory YZR-M1 and just about scrape into the top ten
By contrast, team-mate Jorge Lorenzo is flying at the top of the timesheets so Rossi says he has an awful lot of work to do in free practice three before trying to take an all-important top-six spot in qualifying.
It was a difficult Friday, because I wasn’t strong or fast enough, already starting from this morning. We have a lot of problems and I don’t feel good with the bike and was not able to ride at the limit. The main problem is that I didn’t have enough feeling with the front so I had trouble under braking, turning, and also in changing direction I’m very slow,” said Rossi.
“The bike is too lazy and heavy so this means we don’t have the right balance. Like I said, it was a difficult day. We tried the soft tyre at the end and it was a little bit faster, but not enough. For tomorrow it’s very important that we try to understand the problem, do good work with all the data during the night and try to be more competitive, already starting from tomorrow morning, which will be important for the grid. The problem became bigger because Jorge and Marquez are very fast and consistent so we need to improve.”
