Valentino Rossi is pessimistic over his chances of winning tomorrow’s British Grand Prix despite qualifying second at Silverstone today. The Italian was pipped to pole position by Marc Marquez and was denied by a poor final sector but isn’t sure if he will be able to run at the same level over race distance.
After struggling relative to his rivals in FP4, Rossi wasn’t expecting such a good qualifying result and is hoping that last night’s rain doesn’t return and wash the rubber off the track. Whatever the weather, Rossi still expects a victory challenge to be an uphill task.
“I’m happy. For tomorrow, we need to work to have better tyre life because a lot of times this year, at the beginning we’re not so bad but then we suffer a lot with degradation so it will be very hard in the second half of the race. Today we tried to improve but the feeling with the bike and the track was a little bit worse than yesterday so we hope from today to tomorrow, we have good weather and a dry race. Today was a little surprising but with the pace tomorrow, I think the maximum if everything goes fantastic, we can fight for the last spot on the podium.”
On his Q2 lap, Rossi enjoyed a three-tenth advantage heading into the slow-speed complex which comprises sector four and the nine-times champion feels the weaknesses of his YZR-M1 were exposed in that section.
“It was a good lap, I improved 0.8s on my personal best at Silverstone and it was a surprise because I was a little bit in trouble. We always suffer in sector four because this is a place where we struggle a lot with spinning and find it difficult to find the right speed.”
