Estoril MotoGP: Valentino Rossi upset with ninth

Valentino Rossi didn’t hide his frustration after the Italian could only qualify his factory Ducati in ninth position for tomorrow’s Portuguese MotoGP race.

Bouyed by his fourth position in yesterday’s practice session, Rossi’s hopes of claiming his first second row start on board the Ducati GP11 was thwarted by a front-end set-up issue this afternoon.

The nine-times world champion clocked a best time of 1.38.271 to finish lower than British rookie Cal Crutchlow for the third race in succession as the Monster Yamaha Tech 3 rider continues to impress in his rookie campaign.

Rossi was just over a second off Jorge Lorenzo’s pole position time of 1.37.161 and the 32-year-old said: “I am very upset today and especially about the position because our target was to fight for the second row, around fifth or sixth place and we had the potential yesterday.”

“But today I wasn’t able to ride in a better way and I had a problem with the front. So when I tried to push more I was too much at the limit with the front part of the bike. So more or less the problem remains the same and I can’t make any better unfortunately.”

“For tomorrow it will be another difficult race starting from the third row. At the end we modified the setting and I improved the feeling and also the lap time but it is still not enough. We need to make another step like this to get a good result.”

Rossi refused to blame damp patches that failed to dry during the entire day for his slump down the order and he said: “The track was a bit worse because yesterday it had better grip. Today it rained and it was half and half and we suffered too much with the front. We made a modification to the front and I improve but not enough. I expected to go into the 37s and be on the second row, but no way.”