The German GP weekend was full of ups and downs for Valentino Rossi (Movistar Yamaha MotoGP), Sunday one of the unfortunate downs. When the race began Rossi showed his skill in the wet and quickly moved ahead of Marc Marquez (Repsol Honda Team) to lead the race. He pushed and pushed but was eventually passed by the Ducati-duo of Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Team) and Danilo Petrucci (Octo Pramac Yakhnich). ‘The Doctor’ kept his fellow Italians within touching distance while looking for wet patches to cool his tyres on a drying circuit. As the track dried, more and more riders joined the battle for victory.
With eight laps of the race remaining, Rossi and most of the leaders went into the pits to change tyres, some of the last to step off wets. Rossi opted for intermediates and wasn’t able to stay with Cal Crutchlow (LCR Honda) and Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Team) as they got back out. Unable to match the pace of those on slicks, Rossi crossed the line in eighth place. With 111 points, Rossi remains third and is now only 11 points behind his teammate Jorge Lorenzo (Movistar Yamaha MotoGP). But with Marquez winning the race, Rossi slip 59 points behind the championship lead.
Valentino Rossi: “It‘s a great shame for us, because I was competitive on the dry and under normal conditions I could have done a good race. I was also competitive in the wet, so also in a normal wet race I could have fought for the victory, but unfortunately it was a half-and-half race. If I had stopped two or three laps earlier it would have been a bit better and I could have arrived in sixth place instead of eighth, but the bigger problem was when I restarted I was very slow. I had no feeling with the bike and I wasn‘t strong enough.
“Dovizioso and Crutchlow were with me and we stopped on the same lap, but they were able to arrive on the podium. It‘s a very big question mark if it would have been better if I had ridden on slicks. I had a very bad feeling on the intermediates, but nobody knows if I could have been faster with slicks, it also could have been worse. Maybe our bike in those conditions, when the track is really damp, is a little bit more difficult and gives less feeling.”