Assen MotoGP: Valentino Rossi plays down victory hopes

MotoGP world championship leader Valentino Rossi has conceded he might not have the pace to defeat domimant Aussie Casey Stoner in tomorrow’s Dutch MotoGP.

The Fiat Yamaha rider will start tomorrow’s 26-lap race from third on the grid as he clocked a best time of 1.35.659.

It is Rossi’s fifth front row start of his first campaign with Bridgestone tyres but he was powerless to stop Stoner from romping to a third successive pole position.

The factory Ducati rider has been in superlative form all weekend and he will start red-hot favourite for a third win of the season.

Rossi certainly has cast doubts on his ability to defeat the 22-year-old and he said: “Like always, the front row is our target and so we are happy with this third position. Anyway it’s better than last year, when I was 11th.

“We made some small modifications with the qualifying tyre and today everything seemed to work very well. Now we hope that it will translate to the race tyre, although of course we have to wait and see what the weather is like before we can make a choice, things change so quickly here.

“I was able to try for pole and I thought it was possible on the last lap, but unfortunately I had a small problem with the last tyre. Today we were all very close, closer than yesterday, but I think we still need to improve a bit more if we’re going to be sure to be able to fight with Casey, so we will try to finalise things tomorrow morning.”