Valentino Rossi was forced to negotiate his way through Q1 in Saturday qualifying at Phillip Island and made it look easy.
The Doctor was one of the last riders to leave the box to be ensured of some clear track as he fought for a place in Q2.
His first flying lap put him in fifth place, but it soon turned out that this was only a dress rehearsal for the 1โ29.665s he posted on his next try, which secured him provisional first place.
Unable to improve on his next attempt, he ended his first run with six and a half minutes remaining.
A minute and a half later he checked out of pit lane again to defend his number one spot. With the pace heating up in the final minutes, the Doctor responded by flashing red-helmet times in all sectors and clocking a 1โ29.346s on his last lap to maintain the top position with a 0.359s margin, allowing him to successfully promote to Q2.
The Italian continued where he left off when he started the second qualifying session. He exited the pits as the last rider, hoping to find some clear track again for his qualifying efforts. His second flying lap of 1โ29.260s was enough to put him in fifth position, 0.376s from provisional pole. He made a quick pit stop with eight minutes remaining, before continuing his strong qualifying challenge.
The nine-time World Champion was back out with five minutes left on the clock. He was on the attack once more, but he was unable to better his time on his next lap. He continued pushing and set a 1โ29.203s, improving his time, but he dropped back to sixth place. Not able to make further strides on his last lap he was pushed back to seventh, with a 0.817s margin to first. He will start in tomorrowโs race from the third row of the grid.
โUnfortunately I'm not fast like last year. It was already quite good to recover some positions coming through Q1, which is always dangerous,โ he said. โ I'm seventh, which is not fantastic, because I was able to ride a quite good lap time very early, but after that I was too much on the limit at the corner entry.โ
โI wasn't able to improve on the last lap to start tomorrow's race from a top-5 position. We have to work, also because the setting is not fantastic. We have to try to modify something and after that the weather will be very important. We hope that the weather tomorrow at four o'clock will be like today and that we can race with the slicks. We will see.โ
