Yamaha rider Valentino Rossi took a little while to get underway at the start of the 15-minute qualifying heat in Jerez on Saturday afternoon, allowing most of the traffic to leave before him.
The championship leader entered a relatively empty track, but was struggling to breach into the top of the timesheets.
His best lap on his first run, a 1'39.305s, kept him in tenth place as he entered the pits with less than seven minutes on the clock.
A little more than two minutes later, he was back out again and clearly on a mission. Having dropped to 11th place in the meantime, he was determined to better his position and had two more chances to strive for a top result, which he took with both hands to drop under the 1‘39-mark on his first try.
His best lap, a 1'38.908s, 0.659s from the front, earned him seventh on the grid for Sunday's race.
“I think today wasn‘t so bad, because we worked a lot and improved the feeling with the bike,” he said afterwards. “My pace is not bad. We still have to work, especially on the corner entry. I‘m not fully happy about the results in the qualifying."
" will start from the third row, which is always difficult and I think we could have done better, but we‘re still working on it. We‘re not at 100% yet, we need to improve.”
