With his teammate for this final race, Jorge Lorenzo, in pole position for today’s race in Spain, it’s safe to say that Valentino Rossi was also in contention for a front row start and had the Spanish fans wait until the final minutes of the qualifying, to see him secure third place alongside Marc Marquez.
Rossi brought his a-game to the session, to the delight of the local fans, with an impressive last-minute time attack. Avoiding traffic, he headed out as one of the last riders, giving him enough clear space on track. He gradually built up his pace, shooting up from eighth to fourth on his second lap, before setting a 1‘30.539s for third place.
With a provisional front row in his grasp he returned to the pits and there were four minutes remaining when he rejoined the session. Having been pushed back to seventh, the Doctor had to dig deep to reclaim third place on his next try. He further bettered his time to 1'30.128s, 0.727s from pole, on lap eight and secured third place to wrap up the last qualifying session of the year securing the seventh double front row of the 2016 season for the Movistar Yamaha MotoGP team.
| At this track Jorge and Marc are very strong and I‘m very happy about this front row because usually I struggle always at Valencia and during the practices, from yesterday to today, we had a lot of problems,” Rossi explained. “We weren‘t fast enough but we improved and I think I did a quite good lap, but they are still a bit faster. Depending very much on the pace, I hope to be strong enough to be able to fight for the podium” |
