Rossi plots Qatar fight back.

MotoGP World Champion Valentino Rossi is out to prove his Jerez nightmare was just a freak one-off 'blip', by bouncing back to the top in this Saturday's Qatar Grand Prix.

After being brought down by Toni Elias at the first corner of the season-opening Spanish Grand Prix, Rossi was denied the chance to take his sixth consecutive first round win in the MotoGP class - but, more significantly, he is now 23-points behind Jerez winner Loris Capirossi after recovering to just 14th at the chequered flag.

Rossi, Jerry Burgess, Spanish MotoGP, 2006
Rossi, Jerry Burgess, Spanish MotoGP, 2006
© Gold and Goose

MotoGP World Champion Valentino Rossi is out to prove his Jerez nightmare was just a freak one-off 'blip', by bouncing back to the top in this Saturday's Qatar Grand Prix.

After being brought down by Toni Elias at the first corner of the season-opening Spanish Grand Prix, Rossi was denied the chance to take his sixth consecutive first round win in the MotoGP class - but, more significantly, he is now 23-points behind Jerez winner Loris Capirossi after recovering to just 14th at the chequered flag.

For such reasons, Qatar will be a particularly important weekend for the Camel Yamaha Team and its star rider - but while Rossi's brilliant talent is a proven quantity, question marks remain over his 2006 machinery: Jerez brought out the very worst in the new M1, with chatter hampering both Rossi and team-mate Colin Edwards throughout testing and the grand prix weekend.

A further day of testing following the Jerez race provided the team with another opportunity to work on the vibration problems, but it still appears to be 'treatment rather than a cure'. Fortunately, such chatter problems were far less significant when the team tested at Qatar in February, so Yamaha is hopeful of starting out positively for the second race of the season.

"After a bad start to the season, I am looking forward to going to Qatar and erasing the bad memories," confirmed Rossi. "Our bike worked really well when we went to Qatar for pre-season testing, so we hope that this will be the case again. It's true that we also had a tiny bit of vibration there, but it was only in a couple of places and it was quite manageable. Anyway our bike was very fast in Qatar from the first day, so this is a good sign.

"Last year my victory in Qatar was probably the most exciting race of the season for me, the whole race was at ridden at the maximum and I had a great, great battle with Melandri," added the #46. "I hope that we can have another good race this year, and of course I hope that I can win again and get our championship defence 'back on track!' Qatar is a hard race and very tiring because of the heat, but it's a great track and I enjoy riding there."

Meanwhile, team director Davide Brivio says the team's morale has not been dented by events at Jerez and stresses that their only focus is on turning their fortunes around in Qatar. The extra day of testing in Spain - during which Rossi also rode last year's M1 - provided a welcome chance to gather extra data and Brivio revealed that the team now has several different options available for this weekend.

"The test on Monday was very useful," he began. "We made a slight improvement to the set-up but more than that we were able to gather information that will be useful for us to start with in Qatar. We go there with a couple of different options. One is to use the base setting we found in the pre-season tests, although we missed many of the other teams then so it will be interesting to compare the performance of our competitors on Friday morning. The other is to try the different settings we found at Jerez as a solution to the chatter.

"We know it will be another tough weekend for the team but the morale is still very good. Of course it was a shame to lose so many points in the first race but we are not feeling sad about that now, only focused on the job we have to do," he claimed. "We are keeping our heads down and working hard, studying the data until we find a solution and we will continue to do that every weekend until we are back on top. The mood is optimistic and we are confident that when this problem is solved we can fight to be at the top of the points standings."

First free practice will take place on Thursday at Qatar, with qualifying on Friday and the race on Saturday.

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