Valentino Rossi boosted by Ducati progress

Valentino Rossi was in an upbeat and bullish mood in Malaysia tonight despite finishing in a lowly 13th place on the timesheets and being close to two seconds off the pace of Honda rival Dani Pedrosa.

The Italian was delighted with his progress on the GP11 machine despite the continuing discomfort of his right shoulder costing him at least one second in three hard braking points on the Sepang track.

Rossi posted a best time of 2.02.597 in a 42-lap stint today in much hotter conditions than yesterday when the 2011 winter testing campaign resumed in the Far East.

Rossi’s time left him 1.827s behind Pedrosa but the 31-year-old was satisfied and said: “It was a good day, especially because I can ride the bike much better with my shoulder.

“The shoulder improved a lot and I came back to the level of yesterday. I don’t suffer too much and I can ride the MotoGP bike with my shoulder and this is a very important sign because it means the shoulder is strong enough to resist.

“If you see my shoulder it is very small and I don’t have any muscle, so lap by lap I lose power and I have more pain. But we can work on the power in the next weeks and I am confident to have much more power at the next test.

“This is the most positive thing. We have to work on the bike also and my shoulder is quite a big problem in this moment because we have to develop and improve the bike.

“To do this we have to concentrate on pushing in the point of the track where I can ride normally.

“We try to forget the lap time because in two or three parts we lose a lot of time but we make a good job and we improve the setting and we worked a lot on the different tyres.

“When you change between the soft and the hard tyre the bike has a different reaction compared to the M1 so it is important for us to understand. We tried a new fairing and made some different aerodynamics.”

Rossi told MCN he preferred the smaller fairing option of two to test and he explained why. “I like the bike with the small cowling because we have more agility and in my condition this is a big help,“ said the nine-times world champion, who is still well short of maximum strength and movement in the right shoulder he badly damaged in a moto cross training accident nearly 10 months ago.”

Tomorrow’s work will focus on ironing out a chatter issue with the front-end of the GP11 and Rossi added: “Now the biggest problem for us is the front vibration and we have a bit too much chatter but tomorrow we have some cards to play.

“We haven’t modified big things yet but we have to improve the turning of the bike. These are the two aspects where we have to improve the Desmosedici.

“But it feels like the bike like mine with a better feeling. It is easier now and I try to understand how the bike works and we try to use our experience.”