Rossi, who grew up almost within sight of the Misano circuit, began the San Marino Grand Prix from second on the grid - and with thousands of passionate fans begging him to finally turn the tables on pole sitter, and world championship leader,
Casey Stoner.
The Doctor dropped one place at the start and another a few turns later, as
John Hopkins and then Suzuki team-mate
Chris Vermeulen forced their way through, but never got the chance to retaliate as he lost power and was forced to coast to the pits.
"At the start I felt I was lacking some temperature in my tyres and so I slipped back a little from my starting position. However apart from this I felt quite good, stable, with a good rhythm and confident that things would continue to improve as the temperature in my tyres increased," said Rossi. "However on lap five, when I was braking hard, I suddenly felt something go and that was the end of my race. The engine was the same one that I used at the Brno test and also here in practice and it felt quite good; we don't yet know what the problem was today so we will have to wait until our engineers have had time to examine the situation."
With Stoner winning his eighth race of the season, Rossi has now slipped 85 points behind the Ducati star with just five races, and 125 points, still to be decided.
"It would have been great, and very useful, to have a good result here in Misano today," Valentino reflected. "I like the track a lot and I really wanted to do well in front of all the fans; it was a great emotion for me to see so many people in yellow. Unfortunately this wasn't the case today and now we know that the championship will be very, very difficult. Breaking down after just a few laps is frustrating and unlucky, especially because today we had good expectations and we had been fast during practice."
Nevertheless, Rossi insists there will be no surrender:
"When bad things like this happen you have only two choices; give up or come straight back and start working again even harder than before. This is what we will do at Yamaha; me, my team, the engineers - everyone involved." he declared, before hinting that his target has shifted from the championship to individual races. "We still have five races left and we will keep trying to get the result we deserve. Once again Stoner deserved to win today, so well done to him. We have a lot of work to do before Estoril."
