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Rossi Will Adapt Style to New Ducati Bike

Valentino Rossi admitted that he will have to change his riding style for the 2011 MotoGP season due to the characteristics of his new bike, the Ducati Desmosedici GP11.

The Doctor switched from Yamaha to Ducati at the end of last season and has undergone the majority of the scheduled testing in the off-season for his new squad, and his first impressions – while admitting that his bike lacks a lot of pace as compared to Honda – are that his new racer has some interesting tendencies.

This bike must be ridden mostly through oversteer, in the sense that, in order to make it turn, you need to get the rear to slide a lot,” admitted Rossi in a recent interview with Italian magazine Autosprint.

In this respect the Ducati is very different from the Yamaha. But this is a manoeuvre I do to try to solve the problems we have now: in my opinion, with time, we'll be able to improve the situation a lot. [Turning is] the thing we lack the most. But at the moment the only way to handle this bike is to adapt to that way of riding, it's the bike's DNA.”

Although admitting that some changes can be made on the bike through the season, Rossi was quite certain that for the time being he'll have to adapt his riding style to the bike and not the other way around.

It's up to me to adapt to the bike - also because we have little time at our disposal to do major changes. But while I adapt, we'll carry on working to improve the bike,” he added.

That doesn't mean that I don't think we can make it. I won't ever give up, and neither will my team and certainly neither will Ducati. We have many ideas, we just need time to work. I'm curious to see what this bike feels like on other tracks, starting from Qatar, and with other temperatures,” he concluded.
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