Valentino Rossi still motivated for Ducati challenge

Valentino Rossi is still fully motivated and relishing the tough challenge of turning Ducati’s struggling Desmosedici into a MotoGP world championship challenger.

That’s the view of the Italian’s former factory Yamaha boss Davide Brivio, who admits Rossi has had to completely change his mindset in 2011 to cope with the fact that he’s no longer able to fight for victories on a consistent basis.

Rossi is desperately trying to solve a myriad of problems with this year’s Desmosedici to bridge the gap to Casey Stoner’s Honda RC212V and Jorge Lorenzo’s Yamaha YZR-M1.

Brivio told MCN: “He is still very motivated and he sees Ducati is working very hard. Valentino is working very hard although he has had to change his perspective. It has not been a habit of Valentino’s to fight for fifth or sixth, but it is work in progress and it takes some time to proceed with the development.

“Valentino is a racer and he wants to win tomorrow and he has to be patient. Now he has to put some patience into a project, which he is not used to doing in his career. For sure he has some difficulty for this because for many years he’s been used to winning races and championships.

“Now he has to switch his mind. Luckily he’s more mature now so maybe he can cope better and the fact that he’s already won a lot means you are still confident in yourself.”