Pesaro, explaining that "the fault is primarily mine sold his shoulder and I still do not drive this bike as it should be guided." But take responsibility for a debut a little 'bitter honors Valentino, who is "making the team," but does not hide the situation: "There's a lot of work" said, and the feeling is that we really wanted to say more ...
Her race recounts the chronological Valentino remained on the pace dell'1'56 "down to the sixteenth lap, then suddenly switched to T56" 7 and it went worse and worse. In short, Smith has had to give up. The confirmation that something had happened to come instead from the telemetry: at one point Valentino exerts less pressure on the brake lever and the braking distance is longer. These figures leave no room for interpretation.
"If I did not do a "straight" at the first corner, and if I had done Barbera wasting time, I would have gone a bit 'below, but the truth is that I could not do more. At one point I started shooting with a good rhythm, but after nine laps the shoulder began to lose strength. At that point I changed my position in the saddle, I used a lot of shoulder and left arm and I ended up sending in crisis too. In short, I had to give way. After all these bikes - and I speak of MotoGP, the Ducati is not - you have to guide them in a certain way, otherwise it does not combine anything. "
To close, Valentino said his plans: "At home I'm working hard, I'll have three weeks after Jerez break and I hope that's the period in which the shoulder can finally heal. Or at least, who can regain sufficient strength ". The race was then characterized by the physical limits of the rider, but also those of the bike. And Valentino has avoided the topic: "There's so much to do: I made a long technical meeting to explain what must be done on the bike this year for the second half of the season, but also on the" thousand " . This bike still has the tendency to understeer and it solves this problem only with new parts' . What needs to be done at the factory. The message has certainly already arrived at the target ... The work of development which involved the team for months, leads only to improve the situation - as we did here in Qatar - but does not solve the underlying problems. For this race, the racing department could not do much: he was sent a new software system for managing the anti-tipping. This is the final version, after being developed during the test in Malaysia. But the bike is the same that is seen at Sepang. So to prepare for the race we worked on the weight distribution on the suspension, on the progression of the shock. At the end we managed to find a more efficient Desmosedici curve - higher load the front, as they say in the jargon of the races-but after finding more directionality and ease of handling in curves, the bike has been lost rear grip. So, under acceleration. The trick is finding the balance, but the task seems difficult. When a problem is solved, another emerges. And vice versa.
For now we need to do with what is, at least the next two races. Only in the day of testing at Estoril Collegiate, scheduled for Monday following the race, the team can try out new material. Not bad, so even Valentino Expect: in his case, that the shoulder comes to those fateful six months of prognosis that doctors had indicated at the time of the operation. And six months will have passed when it is May.
