Movistar Yamaha’s Valentino Rossi could only muster eighth place on the timeheets after a day of MotoGP testing in Qatar but said an early crash left him a tyre short so he couldn’t do a time attack to push towards the front.
The Doctor crashed at turn eight on lap three, which took care of a Bridgestone rear, but he managed to get back up to seventh before being bumped back to eighth and a little less than seven-tenths off the pace.
“At the end today it was not so bad. I had a quite good pace, we worked a little bit on the bike and we improved the setting. Unfortunately I had a crash at the beginning of the session. Fortunately I was not injured, but I did have one less tyre so I had to work the whole day with two sets and I was not able to do the time attack at the end,” said Rossi.
“The feeling is quite good for the first day, the lap times are not so bad and it looks like this year’s battle will be very hard because all the bikes and the riders are very strong. Tomorrow we have to continue to work on the bike. We don’t have a lot of new things, but we’ll work on the balance and the setting and will try to improve the lap time.”
