What three days ago seemed impossible became possible yesterday as Gabriel Rodrigo was declared fit to tackle the Qatar GRAN Prix. But unlike in free practice, when he showed a top-six pace, things were not as smooth today for the Argentine rider.<\/p>\n
With the new qualifying format in place for the quarter-litre class of MotoGP, the standard bearer of Team K\u00f6mmerling Gresini Moto3 <\/strong>had more of a difficult time in finding the right slipstream \u2013 a key factor at this track to log a competitive lap-time.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Today\u2019s twelfth place in qualifying still is an incredible achievement for a rider who only six days ago underwent surgery to the (usual) right collarbone.<\/p>\n An early crash during the #QatarGP qualifying will result in the last place on the starting grid for Riccardo Rossi.<\/p>\n Earlier today, the young Italian showed great signs of improvement during FP3, but he simply could not put together a quick-lap attempt in qualifying.<\/p>\n 12th – GABRI RODRIGO #19<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cOur strategy did not work out in qualifying. I first tried to lap on my own and once I got back on track I chose a group of riders to follow, but unfortunately they ended up getting back to the pit-lane. I still did a good lap on my own, but the thing is that you end up losing 5-6 tenths of a second without slipstream, meaning I could have been easily on the second row had I caught a good one. Nothing is lost, however: our pace is good and given the situation we can\u2019t really complain. We can have a great race tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n 29th – RICCARDO ROSSI #54<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cI was basically on my first quick-lap attempt: I chose to tail Ogura but at turn two I saw I was faster so I overtook him, but the front-end tucked and I crashed. Unfortunately the master cylinder of the brake broke and there was no time to repair it and get back on track.its a shame because we could have done well, but I feel good even 5houtj I\u2019m a bit angry with myself. It will be a tough race tomorrow, but I\u2019ll try to recover as many positions as I can.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What three days ago seemed impossible became possible yesterday as Gabriel Rodrigo was declared fit to tackle the Qatar GRAN Prix. But unlike in free practice, when he showed a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27005,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-moto3-en","category-race-report-moto3-en"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n