Rossi wishes rivals well after crashes

Fiat Yamaha’s Valentino Rossi was quick to wish his World Championship rivals Jorge Lorenzo and Casey Stoner all the best on Saturday afternoon at Laguna Seca having seen both of them carried away from trackside in a dramatic qualifying session.

Rossi, who leads the general standings by five points from team-mate Lorenzo and is nine points in front of Stoner, qualified in second place on the grid for Sunday’s American MotoGP contest, while both of his big rivals suffered nasty crashes.

Poleman Lorenzo partially dislocated his right shoulder and heavily bruised his right foot in a huge highside on the Yamaha M1, whilst Stoner highsided the Ducati Desmosedici GP9 and was also helped away from trackside, prompting a concerned Rossi to wish all the very best to both afterwards.

Stoner is uninjured, but Lorenzo will not be cleared to race, or ruled out until Sunday, with Rossi commenting, “Firstly I just hope that Casey and Jorge are fit and are able to race, because for sure it would be a great battle between us, as our pace on race tyres is very similar.”

On his own performance in qualifying he added, “I’m very happy with my second position. Actually today we did not have two perfect practices and we still have some problems to fix. At the end, especially in the last part of the track I am not strong enough so we have to work on Sunday to improve our setting. So I’m happy that we still managed to qualify second, not far from Lorenzo, considering our problem.”