The Mugello stands may have chanted his nickname before the start of each session, but that was not enough for Valentino Rossi to perform well on this first day of free practice in Tuscany.
With the Doctor, nothing is obviously decided yet, but the one who took pole position during the last edition appeared in difficulty both this morning and this afternoon.
Lucid, the Italian champion points out that the other Yamahas have proven to be faster, a sign that the delay conceded to the best can both be reduced and, in any case, comes from him.
12th this morning at 0.798 second, the man from Tavullia could not do better than 18th this afternoon, 0.994 second from Francesco Bagnaia… and 0,948 from Fabio Quartararo on a satellite M1.
Valentino Rossi : “It was a difficult day, I expected to be more competitive but, from this morning I was not very fast. I didn't feel very good, and I wasn't able to ride very well. I was slower than last year. Actually my position is quite bad, so we need to improve. The peloton is tight, so I'm way behind in the standings. This afternoon we tried the hard tires, but the pace isn't fantastic. We need to improve in other areas than top speed, because the other Yamahas are quite fast. We need to reflect on the situation tonight and do everything in our power to be stronger on Saturday. Quartararo's second place and Maverick's fifth prove that Yamaha can continue this momentum. Franky Morbidelli is in tenth place. Maverick found a good solution in FP2, which gives me confidence. But so far I'm too slow in the corners. I don't have the right feeling to accelerate. This is why we suffered a lot today. We have to change a lot of things for Saturday.”
Massimo Meregalli : “We had already assumed that this weekend would start with some difficulties here at Mugello given the long straight, but we did not expect the difficulties we experienced in FP1. During FP2 the situation returned to more normal, except for Valentino's P18, and so we need to find out what happened. We were fast in sector 1-3 and lost time where we planned it. Today we were also able to test most of the tire combinations and we were almost able to determine which option we will use for Sunday's race. I expect it to be a long night for our engineers, to analyze the data and prepare solutions to improve our performance on both sides of the garage for tomorrow's FP3, and to have both drivers in Q2." .
FP2 classification Italian Grand Prix MotoGP:
Classification credit: MotoGP.com
