Rossi had had a sh*t night - I'm sorry, but there's no other word for it - qualifying seventh fastest, 1.206 seconds behind his 'team-mate', the pole-sitter
Jorge Lorenzo. This is the Rossi who binned Michelin tyres last year for the flavour-of-the-season Bridgestones, leaving Lorenzo to soldier on with the démodé French tackle. Only it turns out that four months on, Michelin can suddenly build stickier skins than the Japanese. Oh, f***, or however you say it in Italian…
But in this open-air media conference, Rossi beams at Italian TV cameras and explains what's gone wrong, then wades through the same story to Italian print journalists, then has to repeat the whole sorry saga in a foreign language to we Brit journalists.
"I laugh, it's better, because the result isn't so positive, and we know we have to suffer a little in the qualifying," Valentino begins. Only The Great Showman could open a press conference like this.
And the bloke genuinely
is laughing as he explains: "I am happy with the bike with race tyres, and I think we can have a good race tomorrow."
Meaning today, actually, because everyone here is suffering from time-warp at this first ever night
MotoGP race - it starts at 11pm tomorrow - sorry,
today ¬- and we're going around greeting one another with "Good morning” at six in the evening like we were at
Jerez or
Donington.
"It looks like with the Bridgestones I can go very fast from the first lap," Valentino continues, looking forward in hyper-positive mode to his impending struggle from the third row. He figures that his tyres heat up faster than the Michelins, whose riders may have to be a bit cautious in the opening laps if they're not to end up in the gravel trap.
"It's possible to make a difference riding in another way," Valentino says enigmatically.
Well, in what way, exactly?
By strategically shifting his weight on the bike, apparently, he can sort of cancel out the fact that the Losail circuit has 10 right-hand turns to only six left-handers, so he'll be able to go flat-out from the start and reach the podium. On a bike that's 5mph slower down the straight than the Ducatis.
