Marlboro Ducati's Valentino Rossi will be without his long-time crew chief Jeremy Burgess at this weekend's Mugello MotoGp round as the Australian has flown home to be with his wife as she may have to undergo surgery.

It leaves The Doctor without the man who has masterminded all of his premier class titles and may have come up with answers to the questions over front-end setup of the GP11.1 which Rossi had issues with at Assen.

“First of all I’d like to wish good luck to Jeremy, who won’t be able to join us this weekend due to very important personal reasons. We’ll miss him very much in the garage, but we look forward to seeing him at the Sachsenring," said the Italian.

"In the meantime, we must try to do well at Mugello. We’ve ridden there with the GP12, but because our bike is an 800, it responds a little differently to adjustments, and it’s also in its first phase of development. It will be vital to quickly find the right path for the setup, as it’s important that we improve in every session in order to qualify in a good position.

"The track is one of my favorites, and I’ve always done pretty well there. Returning after last year’s accident is no problem for me, because I enjoyed riding there during the recent tests, as I always do. I hope there will be a big crowd and that I’ll be able to do better than we’ve managed until now, because this is a very important race.”