Qatar MotoGP: Valentino Rossi struggles with shoulder

Valentino Rossi’s bid to fight for a top five on his much anticipated Ducati GP11 debut in Qatar on Sunday night continues to be badly hampered by his injured right shoulder.

Nearly a year since he first suffered serious ligament and tendon damage in a motocross training accident, Rossi is still a long way short of 100 per cent fitness.

And he’s struggling to cope with the physical demands of riding the GP11 consistently fast, as was the case again in Qatar last night.

The 32-year-old finished down in ninth place on the combined practice leaderboard with a best time of 1.56.306 set in last night’s third and final session.

That was still a massive 1.271s behind dominant Repsol Honda rider Casey Stoner and Rossi told MCN his shoulder was once again a major issue.

The nine-times world champion said: “The problem is hard braking and entry on the right. When I brake straight and I enter I can’t push enough and if I brake more I don’t have enough power to counter act the force on the opposite side.

“I slide on the bike and it upsets the settings. I am always wide and it is quite difficult, but in another one or two months I will be fit. Today was a little worse than yesterday because I suffered bit more with my shoulder riding two days in a row.

“I had a bit less power and I didn’t improve the lap time. We are still not able to work on the bike in the right way and we are at about the same level as yesterday, so I am not happy.

“I’m ninth and the second group is quite close, but if I want to fight for the top five, I need to improve by at least two or three tenths per lap.”

Rossi also told MCN that the Ducati was proving difficult to improve once he’d reached a certain lap time.

One issue is the lack of experience his crew has at tweaking the GP11 and he added: “It is quite easy to ride at one level but very hard to improve.

“Ducati had this problem in the past and this problem is bigger with us because our team still has to understand how to work on this bike.”