Valentino Rossi and Franco Morbidelli 14th and 18th respectively at Sachsenring

PETRONAS Yamaha Sepang Racing Team’s Valentino Rossi ended a tricky GermanGP, where rain briefly fell during the race, with two points in 14th, while Franco Morbidelli crossed the Sachsenring finish line 18th.

Although Rossi didn’t have the best of starts to the GermanGP, losing four places in the opening corners to round out the first lap in 19th, he was able to recover quite quickly. Making progress during the early stages of the race, the Italian soon found himself inside the point-scoring positions, moving into 14th on lap 5. The remainder of the race proved to be quiet for Valentino, who held station in 14th and crossed the line to claim two points.

Having lined up 17th on the grid, Morbidelli also experienced a poor start, finding himself 22nd after being pushed wide in the first corner. Mirroring his team-mate in making progress during the opening laps, Franco clawed his way back to 18th but, when the rain flag came out on lap 9, he found himself back in 19th. The Italian was able to regain one place in the closing stages of the race, to end the GermanGP 18th.

Rossi and Morbidelli will now turn their attention to next weekend’s DutchGP, the final one before the summer break gets underway, at TT Circuit Assen (25-27 June).

Razlan Razali
Team Principal
We can’t help but feel disappointed with the results this race weekend, across all three categories. However, we will take everything that we have learned from this weekend, absorb it, reflect on it and then look to come back stronger in the next round at Assen. Certainly, we have seen good pace and also improvement when we look across our squad but we will know we can all achieve better results and that is the target before we go into the summer break.

#46 Valentino Rossi
14th (+22.300)
I had a good feeling this morning and Warm Up was good. I was riding well, enjoying it, and I had a good lap time right up until the end of the session. The problem is that everything in the race is more difficult. I needed a good start but I didn’t have one and so I was stuck in traffic. It was not easy. When I had clear air ahead, I was able to do some good lap times. In fact my pace was not too bad, but it was not enough. I also had to slow down in the final laps because I started to suffer with lack of rear grip. We took some points but we did expect better today.

#21 Franco Morbidelli
18th (+24.414)
We already knew yesterday that starting so far behind, on such a narrow track and with a lack of speed, that it was going to be a difficult race today. We tried something with our setup to try to make the bike more stable in braking, to see if we could outbrake somebody on track in the race. Unfortunately we were reaching the corners with too much of a gap to the rider in front to be able to do this. The turning was not as good either so our speed was a little less than in FP4. I’m feeling more confident about Assen though, as it is a flowing track and I’m looking forward to it.

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