Being Realistic

Rossi expects tough season

Valentino Rossi’s legacy as MotoGP’s greatest ever rider is in danger of being further eroded by another lacklustre season with Ducati and the Italian is under no illusions about how difficult this year could be. The season will begin at the Losail track in Qatar on Sunday and Rossi, a nine-times World champion across the classes, will have to work hard throughout the year if he is to better last year’s seventh place finish on the uncompetitive Italian bike.

Rossi said on Tuesday: “We worked hard over the winter and although we went the wrong direction at one point, we once again managed to find the good feeling with the GP12 that we’d had in the first test. I’m a realist and I know well that our times are still a long way off and that there are still some things to fix. We won’t be able to address some of them right away, but it’s also true that both we at the track and the guys back home now have a direction to work in and we must try to do as well as we can.”

“We won’t completely redo the bike during the season, but we’ll try to progress little by little,” he added.