Marlboro Ducati's Valentino Rossi has admitted he is once again struggling with the new semi-automatic gearbox debuted with the GP11.1 as it is stickking in neutral and forced him to run off track several times in practice and qualifying at Misano.
The Italian nine-time world champion is languishing down in 11th place, a position in which he has spent most of the weekend, but says he has found some pace to take into tomorrow's race but couldn't show it this afternoon as he was blocked by traffic.
"Unfortunately when I go outside the track I always have a problem with the gearbox like in Indy it remain in neutral and for this reason we have to understand what happens for tomorrow because for sure if we make one more mistake like this in the race we lose a lot. I am running off because it is staying in neutral so in that area the engine braking is very important," said The Doctor, speaking to bikesportnews.com this evening.
"You don't understand it when you remain in neutral it's like driving the car on the road, you try to put neutral in one corner and it all becomes very difficult. There is no way to stop the bike without the gear and I also have another problem with braking on the edge but is another thing. I always go straight in the first corner but that is straight braking so we have to fix for tomorrow. We have a problem because our new generation gearbox is still not ready and sometimes have some problem remaining in neutral so that is one thing to work for for next year for improving the next bike.
"I was a little unfortunate on what would have been my fast lap, because after three good sectors, I came upon De Puniet going slow in the final hairpin before the last two left-handers, and there alone I lost half a second. Otherwise I could have done a 1:34.0 and started from the third row, which is what we had set out to do."
