MotoGP news

Rossi aims Chinese podium

Valentino Rossi heads to Shanghai with his mind still fully focused on the job despite tyre problems at Istanbul and in this race last year. Other than when he fell and re-mounted to take 14th at Jerez last season, tenth place in Turkey was the Italian's worst-ever dry weather result since his rookie premier-class season in 2000 and he is keen to make amends this Sunday.

"We had a bad result in Turkey which we weren't expecting after being on pole, but Michelin have been working very hard to understand what went wrong and to ensure that it won't happen again," says Rossi. "We had a good test on Monday and tried a lot of new tyre combinations with China in mind, so we are going there with some ideas about what we think will work. Now it's a case of making what is hopefully the right tyre choice and then seeing how things go on Friday morning.

"Last year we had a big problem in China and I couldn't finish the race, but in 2005 I had a great victory there in the wet so I have some nice memories of this track as well as some bad ones! We know it's not ideal for our bike and maybe they're going to have to split the main straight in two - one part for Ducati and one part for the rest of us! Joking aside though, it's a very long straight and we know that we're going to lack some top speed on it but the new engine modifications we had in Turkey worked well and there's a good improvement, so hopefully it won't be too serious. We're second in the championship and we've lost a few points so we need to aim for a podium to get back on track."

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