Valentino Rossi voices grip concern

MotoGP world championship leader Valentino Rossi has voiced concerns about a lack of grip at the Catalunya circuit after Jorge Lorenzo and John Hopkins needed lengthy medical treatment after big crashes today.

Lorenzo and Hopkins’ participation in Sunday’s race is in doubt after they crashed in this afternoon’s second free practice session.

Rossi was third fastest with a best time of 1.43.090 as he chases a fourth straight win to extend his 12-point lead over Dani Pedrosa.

The Fiat Yamaha rider, sporting a special Italian Euro 2008 football paintjob on his YZR-M1 machine, said: “We’ve got a hard job here because this is one of the most difficult tracks for the surface; you slide so much!

“It’s very important to try to find the best traction for the long acceleration areas, and so we’ve tried a lot of different tyres today in order to try to understand what’s going to help us the most.

“The grip is worse than normal here today because of the rain overnight and so this is making it even harder, plus with Bridgestone I need quite a different riding style to last year so we have to think about this too.

“The setting of Mugello is more or less okay as a base but the important thing is the traction and at the moment we still need to improve this.”