Yamaha rider Valentino Rossi had a challenging start to the German Grand Prix on Friday.
Although he carried a competitive pace on his opening laps, the tide turned when he encountered a technical issue on his first bike, losing him valuable time in the first free practice session.
The Italian quickly returned to the box to head back out on track on his second bike and posted a best lap of 1'22.535s, for 16th place, 0.936s from the top.
The Doctor‘s misfortunes continued in the afternoon.
He had hoped for a dry FP2 in order to better the time and position he obtained in FP1, but quite the opposite was the case.
As it soon became clear the completely wet session wouldn‘t allow him to breach into the top-10 of the combined timesheets, he focused on fine-tuning his bike‘s settings.
With the final ten minutes of the session spent under bright sunshine, he set the 15th fastest time on his final lap, 1.434s from the front.
“It was a difficult day, because I was slow in all the conditions,” he explained. “I think that especially in the wet we suffer very much. I think we're not good with the balance of the bike. In the dry I think our pace is a bit better, but anyway it's nothing fantastic.”
“Unfortunately, on the last run in FP1 I didn't have any feeling with the front tyre and I wasn't able to make a good lap time to enter the top-10. As I'm not in the top-10, we hope that tomorrow we can have a dry session in FP3.”
“If not, it will be very difficult because starting from behind is a nightmare for everybody. We have to try to improve the bike's balance in the wet, because with the new asphalt the bike is very difficult to ride and usually in the wet we are stronger, but today we're are quite far from the top, so we have to try to modify something.”
