Valentino Rossi and Nicky Hayden finished eleventh and fifteenth, respectively, in today’s qualifying session for the Gran Premio di San Marino e della Riviera di Rimini. The Italian managed to find a setup for the race that is better than what he used on Friday, but he experienced bad luck on his final lap when another rider blocked his way.
After a promising morning session, Nicky Hayden had a harder time than expected in qualifying, and tomorrow he’ll start from the fifth row of the grid and try to make up ground.
Valentino Rossi (Ducati Team) 11th (1:34.676)
“Today went a bit better. We changed the setup a little compared to yesterday, and then we stuck with that, making small steps. There were no longer parts of the track where I lost a lot of time compared to the others, as we reached a steady level around the entire lap, although of course we’re still not as fast as we’d like to be. I was a little unfortunate on what would have been my fast lap, because after three good sectors, I came upon De Puniet going slow in the final hairpin before the last two left-handers, and there alone I lost half a second. Otherwise I could have done a 1:34.0 and started from the third row, which is what we had set out to do. Anyway, I’m not too bad in terms of pace, so we’ll see what we can do in the race tomorrow.”
Nicky Hayden (Ducati Team) 15th (1:34.955)
“This morning wasn’t bad to start with. I had used tyres from yesterday and was able to find a rhythm and do some decent laps. As has been the case lately though, things got worse in the afternoon. I was pushing the front, and I had a lot of front chatter, even with the soft tyres. It’s tough for Ducati here at their home, with the team trying hard and all the fans wanting to see us do something. I’ve got to believe the bike is better than fifteenth, so I’ve got to do a better job myself. It’s not the day we hoped for, and we’ll try to do better in the race tomorrow.”
