MotoGP: Rossi hoping for dry race despite wet weather pace

Valentino Rossi is hoping for dry conditions for tomorrow’s British Grand Prix despite admitting he’s much stronger in the wet.

The nine-time World Champion qualified second for the race in this afternoon’s sodden qualifying session, but is confident of finding improvements with the Movistar Yamaha team ahead of tomorrow’s race should it be dry.

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His lack of pace in the morning’s dry third free practice nearly saw him have to fight for a place in Q2 as he dropped down the order towards the end of the session to eventually finish tenth.

Knowing he hasn’t got the pace to compete with the likes of Marquez and Vinales in the dry, the Italian says the front row is a small help but admits he needs to find something in tomorrow morning’s warm up ahead of the race.

“When I saw the lap time of Cal I was on 2’22.2 and he had done 2’19.2 and I thought it might be difficult but I saw I was P5 on the board and thought maybe he’d done a crazy lap!” he said after the session.

“I tried and I got within a second but thought I could stay on the front row with that as that is important for me. The conditions towards the end became very dangerous with a lot of water. The front row is important as we are not very strong in the dry, we need to work to improve this but if our pace is not fantastic starting from the front row is a small help.

“At the moment I’m stronger in the wet but I always prefer the dry, we just need to improve to be stronger in the dry. We have an evening to work on it and can modify something and hopefully it will be dry in morning warm up so I can try something because the tyre choice is also unclear for a lot of riders.” 

 

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