Early crash for Rossi in Qatar

Valentino Rossi’s Qatari test got off to the worst possible start with the Italian crashing on his third lap of the opening night’s running of the final pre-season test.

Rossi crashed at turn eight after one of the fork seals broke on his front fork:

“One of the oil seals on the front fork broke, the liquid spilled on the rear tire, and I high-sided,” said Rossi. “I kept sliding for about 120 meters, fortunately without a scratch. The crash, however, hampered the whole day. First, that was the ‘best’ bike. Second, we had to throw away two fresh tires and were left with only two sets. So, we changed our program and worked on race pace rather than pure speed.”

Overall however he was pleased to have been able to complete the majority of his planned programme despite losing a set of tyres from his opening night’s allocation:

“At the end today it was not so bad. I had a quite good pace, we worked a little bit on the bike and we improved the setting. Fortunately I was not injured, but I did have one less tyre so I had to work the whole day with two sets and I was not able to do the time attack at the end. The feeling is quite good for the first day, the lap times are not so bad and it looks like this year’s battle will be very hard because all the bikes and the riders are very strong.”