Brake and grip issues halt Valentino Rossi’s early charge

A front brake issue and a lack of rear grip conspired to make the start of the Motorland Aragon MotoGP weekend a tough one for nine-times world champion Valentino Rossi.

The Italian was optimistic he would be challenging for the top three in today’s opening two practice sessions after a successful test at the Spanish track back in June.

Rossi was fifth quickest in this morning’s FP1 but his efforts to improve in hot conditions this afternoon were thwarted by a front brake issue with his preferred number one factory YZR-M1 machine.

A best lap of 1.49.909 left the 34-year-old down in seventh position on combined times and almost a second adrift of the fastest pace set by world championship leader Marc Marquez.

Rossi said: “This afternoon we had a lot of technical problems with the number one bike with the front brake. We tried to fix it and changed the front tyre and the pads but there was no improvement. I lost half the session. 

“My number two bike didn’t have the best setting but I did some laps to understand the rhythm and we were not at 100% because of all the problems. After some the laps the rear tyre was sliding a lot on both the right and left and became very hot and the bike was very difficult to control. I was losing time everywhere. 

“At the test here it was 15 degrees less and we had more grip and could go a lot faster.”

In previous years the obvious solution to fix a lack of rear grip in hot conditions would be to use a harder compound rear tyre.

But Rossi said that wasn’t possible because as has been the case at most races in 2013, the hard compound rear tyre simply doesn’t work.

He added: “In the past with this type of problem it is very easy to fix because you put in the hard rear but unfortunately the hard rear now doesn’t work. It is a bad tyre. Nobody can use the hard rear because there is no grip. 

“We have to try and make the best from the soft tyre. The other riders who tried the hard always have the same problem.  No rear grip, a lot of spinning after three or four laps with a big drop (in performance). Maybe we can try it tomorrow but it is useless.”