Valentino Rossi says he is “more optimistic” after enjoying a positive ride to tenth in the Italian Grand Prix at Mugello, his first top ten result of the season.
The seven-time premier class champion looked to be struggling once again at the first of his two home races this year after qualifying only 19th, the Petronas SRT Yamaha rider missing the Q2 cut-off by nearly a full second.
He fought back once the race got underway though despite dropping to the foot of the leaderboard after getting involved in contact early on, showing solid speed as he recovered to tenth by the end of the contest to record the best result of his largely underwhelming ’21 campaign so far.
Rossi says he was happy to display “decent” race pace compared to the opening five races of the term after losing time early on, leaving him “more optimistic” for the upcoming Catalan contest this weekend.
“Unfortunately I lost time in the first corner because I touched a little bit and was last, but after this my race pace was decent because we improved day by day and I wasn’t so bad today,” said Rossi.
“I was able to recover but unfortunately I lost a lot of time at the beginning, I was able to make overtakes and my pace was pretty good and I could reach the top ten.
“It’s not fantastic, but if you consider our situation now we will take the points and it pretty good.
“I am more optimistic for next weekend (at Barcelona), this weekend was difficult because I expected (not to be fast) as in 2019 here at Mugello I was not very strong but we worked well and improved and it is important we start from this point at Barcelona.”
Rossi’s season-best run to tenth-only his third points finish across the first six races-lifted him from 21st in the riders standings to 19th on 15 points.
His rough start to life as an independent racer sees him ahead of only three other full-time riders, Tech 3 KTM’s Iker Lecuona and Italian rookie pairing Luca Marini-Rossi’s half brother who competes with VR46 backing at Avintia Ducati- and Aprilia’s Lorenzo Savadori.
Rossi’s factory Yamaha replacement Fabio Quartararo currently leads the MotoGP riders standings by a hefty 26 points following his third win of the year at Mugello, while his Petronas SRT team-mate Franco Morbidelli is ninth overall after a mixed start with his year-old M1, a sole rostrum of the year so far coming in the Spanish GP at Jerez for the ’20 vice-champion.
