Misano MotoGP: Valentino Rossi worried by race pace

Valentino Rossi reckons he will have to improve his pace to pose a threat to title rival Casey Stoner in tomorrow’s Misano GP.

The 29-year-old will start his home race from second on the grid as he was powerless to stop Stoner from notching a seventh successive pole position.

Rossi’s best time of 1.33.888 was a massive 0.510s slower than Stoner and he reckons he needs to improve his speed on Bridgestone’s race tyres too.

The Italian, who is chasing a third straight victory, said: “I’m happy about our work because we did a good job with the qualifying tyres this afternoon and we were able to improve with each one, which is important.

“In the end we couldn’t match Casey’s time but anyway second on the grid is good for the race. Our race set-up is still not perfect and there are some corners where we need to be faster still, so we have to work to try to improve that tonight.

“We have a lot of data now from the two days and so we will use this to try to come up with something to try in warm-up tomorrow. I think we can definitely still improve our race setting a little bit more.”