And while that news should worry his and Ducati's fans ahead of the 2011 MotoGP campaign, the Doctor insisted that some positives could be found in today's testing session.
“We can be satisfied with today as a first day, because we're a second from the top, like we were at the end of the first test but without trying a late 'time attack' with the soft tire like the others did,” said Rossi, referring to the fact the today's fast laps were scored on the soft tire, late in the session. “For the most part today, I was between fifth and sixth place, which is the goal we had set.”
In addition, the Italian also stressed that he's losing close to 3 tenths of a second due to his shoulder injury. So actually, it we are to do the math here, the Ducati is actually less than half of second slower than the mighty Hondas a few weeks before the start of the MotoGP season.
“I'm still losing about three tenths due to the shoulder, because I'm still stronger in the left turns, whereas I'm normally the opposite; the rest we'll have to find by working on the bike.”
“I'm also happy because we spent all our time on the hard tires, which we struggled with before today. In the end, we chose one of the two set-ups that we had settled upon at the last test, and that will now be our base to work from, and the one on which we'll concentrate our efforts in the next couple of days.”
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