Valencia MotoGP: Valentino Rossi unhappy with pace

Valentino Rossi faces a mountain to climb to end his 2009 campaign with victory in Valencia tomorrow.

The Italian will start the 30-lap race from fourth on the grid having struggled with rear grip in today’s decisive qualifying session.

Rossi missed the front row for only the fourth time this season as he finished a massive 0.666s adrift of pole-setter Casey Stoner.

He was 0.385s away from third placed Jorge Lorenzo and the 30-year-old conceded his hopes of notching a seventh premier class victory tomorrow were remote.

The nine-times world champion said: “Today was difficult and I struggled a lot with the grip and there was no way to find better rear grip on my bike. We have a big problem and I am not fast enough.

“Fourth position is good because it means on the soft tyre I am fast but on the harder tyre I am in trouble and it will be difficult to make a good race.

“We have some ideas to try in the warm-up and try and understand our situation for the race but it is difficult to fix the problem now.”

Rossi said he was at a loss to explain his sluggish pace and added: “We are not able to create temperature and good grip on the rear tyre so I don’t how we can fix it.

“I think the big problem is that how I like my bike is not a good set-up for this race track and this is the main problem in Valencia. 

“In the past Jorge is also not so strong here but he looks okay today and he has good pace.”

Rossi said his pre-race hopes were just about achieving a podium finish, which would mean a fourth successive race without a victory for the seven-times MotoGP world champion.

He added: “Tomorrow my maximum chance is to try for the podium and try and be
closer to Dani or Jorge. I don’t have the pace and it will be a good race if I can stay away from Colin (Edwards), Ben (Spies) and Randy (de Puniet).”