Valentino Rossi had a weekend of two halves in Qatar after Saturday’s P4 qualifying failed to translate in his opening MotoGP with the Petronas team.

Rear tyre durability curtailed ‘The Doctor’s’ steady start, dropping him toward the back of the pack, after the opening laps saw him circulating closely behind the factory Yamaha’s, in seventh.

As his M1 continued to struggle with rear grip, Rossi was seen falling as far down as 16th by the mid-point of the 22-lap race, with the veteran Italian using his experience calmly as he began to claw back positions in the closing stages. The Petronas rider eventually crossed the line 12th, collecting four championship points for his new outfit.

“We expected more,” Rossi admitted after the race. “Especially after qualifying yesterday, but I struggled in the race. After several laps I had a problem with the tyres, especially the rear, which is something that we also saw on Friday. For some reason I stress too much the rear tyre and then it loses performance.

“So, after some laps. I’m not fast enough. We were hoping that it would have been less of a problem today, with the cooler temperatures, but unfortunately the feeling was similar and I lost some positions.

In the long run, especially Friday I had already this feeling, we try to do something but unfortunately we don’t fix the problem. Yesterday we try the hard rear, because on Friday we had some problem with the soft but with the hard rear we were not fast enough, so we decided to race with the soft.

“I feel like I had a good start compared to the other Yamahas, but all the Ducati’s are a lot stronger than us and arrive to the first corner with a lot more speed. I feel like we entered the first corner with a good speed, the problem is they are faster! Now we try to fix it.

“Maverick is impressive and he did a fantastic race, and this is positive, that a Yamaha win. They have something different in the setting compared to us, it looks like that worked very well, also Quartararo was strong, so is good for trying to understand if we are able to improve next week.”