Rossi: 'Dovizioso is a very good story'

Valentino Rossi believes Andrea Dovizioso's stunning MotoGP season, during his tenth year in the premier-class, is proof that young riders should be given time to deliver results.

Dovizioso had claimed just one MotoGP win from his 2008 debut, until Sepang 2016, riding for Honda, Yamaha and finally Ducati.

But the Italian has stormed to six wins this season alone, keeping him in with a slim title chance at this weekend's Valencia season finale.

"For me, Dovizioso is a very good story," Rossi replied, when asked about the level of expectation placed on young riders. "Because he passed through difficult periods in his career, especially in MotoGP.

"Everybody has to learn from him because he never give up and especially he never lose the faith, the self-belief. He had won one race in ten years and now he has won six races in one year.

"So to do like this you have to be strong, you have to be 'balanced'. It's like this.

"It's not just in MotoGP, but in all sports where everybody wants results straight away. You never have time. We try to help our guys [in the VR46 Academy]. We try to work to improve every time. But everybody needs their time."

Rossi was speaking after setting the eleventh fastest lap time during Friday practice, meaning the Movistar Yamaha rider is currently outside the top ten place needed for direct access to Qualifying 2.

"This morning I was quite slow. I don't feel good and it was already in the plan not to put the soft tyre. And I was P18 like this. We tried to concentrate on the race, especially to understand the difference between the tyres. In the afternoon I was not fantastic but I improved a lot the feeling and in the last run the feeling was quite good."

Unfortunately for Rossi and team-mate Maverick Vinales (12th fastest), the low grip is once again taunting the 2017 Yamaha.

"The grip level in this track is very low also because it's cold and you have to use quite hard tyres. So it's a bad, bad condition for us this year, because during all this season we suffer very much in these conditions," Rossi confirmed.

"For me the biggest problem today was hard braking. Because it is difficult to stop the bike and also after some laps we start to suffer with the rear tyre, like happened a lot of times this year.

"So I think it will be not an easy weekend. But at the end in the last exit I was not so bad. Tomorrow morning, first of all we will try to improve the braking and then stay in the top ten for Qualifying 2."