Valentino Rossi admits he felt “very uncomfortable” aboard his Yamaha on the Saturday of the MotoGP Valencia Grand Prix, and could only manage 16th in qualifying.
Rossi failed to make it into the top 10 in FP3 after suffering an early crash at Turn 4, and was unable to climb out of Q1 while teammate Maverick Vinales progressed to the second part before going on to take pole.
The Italian, who will start 16th for Sunday's finale, admits all day he felt “very uncomfortable”, pinning his problems on front locking under braking and a lack of traction under acceleration.
“Was a very difficult day for me, very tough, because after the practice of yesterday I was quite optimistic to be strong because I felt good,” he said.
“But this morning, in FP3 that was very important, I was not so fast. I try to push at the beginning, but I crash, but after that, I take the other bike but I don't have enough pace and enough feeling to arrive inside the top 10.
“So I'm looking for the afternoon, but at the same time the conditions are different, coming dry, and the reality in the FP4 and the afternoon I never feel happy with the bike.
“I feel very uncomfortable, I could not push and I was quite slow. So for tomorrow I have to start from very behind, so will be very hard, but tonight we will try to work, try to improve our pace, our feeling, and we have to wait for the condition because the forecast is quite bad for tomorrow.
““I was very, very in trouble in braking, I never stop. I have front lock, so I always arrive too fast into the corner.
“Also on acceleration, I didn't have a lot of grip, so it was very very difficult to ride. But I try, and I was not fast enough.”
With Sunday's race set to be wet, Rossi admits “with more water” on the track he felt stronger but is wary of fighting through spray from so far down the grid at the start.
“Yesterday with more water I felt good, I was good,” he added.
“Looks like here change a lot the quantity of the water. In case of a wet race, you have for sure when you start behind in the first lap it's more difficult because you have a lot of spray.
“But will depend very much from the pace, if we can be stronger and I have a good feeling with the bike, try to come back and recover the position."
