British MotoGP: Damage limitation for Valentino Rossi

Valentino Rossi ended a miserable debut at the Silverstone circuit with a lucky sixth place as the Italian conceded he was way off the pace throughout the entire British Grand Prix weekend.

The 32-year-old finished over a minute behind a dominant Casey Stoner as the progress he’s made in recent races at Le Mans and Catalunya came to a shuddering halt in England.

The nine-times world champion, who was easily defeated by American team-mate Nicky Hayden, said: “We have two problems. The first one is that the Yamaha and Honda are faster than us. The second problem is the performance of Nicky. Always he was faster than me, but this morning in the warm-up I was faster than him and for the race they were able to improve a lot and my bike was very difficult to ride.

“This means on the other side of the pit they work better than us and they are able to make a better result. The problem is we are too far away with the setting. We start are too far away from a good setting and we still have a problem on Sunday.”

Rossi said he was hopeful of a return to form at the forthcoming Dutch Grand Prix in Assen, where he is expected to try an updated carbon fibre chassis.

He added: “I expected this weekend would be difficult because I don’t ride well in this track. But in Assen I hope to come back at the level we had in Le Mans and Barcelona. This is the target. Considering how we came into the race, sixth place is a fairly positive result that helps us to stay not too far from the top of the standings in fourth, which isn’t bad.

“We knew that my lack of experience here compared to the others would hurt us, but it’s also true that we haven’t managed to improve our setup as well as we should have. We’re all responsible, me, the bike, and the team, so together we’ll try to improve and take another step forward.”

For eight pages of coverage from Silverstone, see the June 15 issue of MCN.