Rossi: I needed a longer holiday!

 After a brief two-weekend summer break, Valentino Rossi continues his quest to end Yamaha’s MotoGP win drought at Brno this weekend.

Rossi starts the second half of the season holding second in the world championship, but a distant 46 points behind Honda’s Marc Marquez, having not won a race in over a year.

“First of all, I needed a longer holiday!” said Rossi. “Everybody is saying this, but this is the way it is. I took one week off, and I would have enjoyed some more time, but now we need to focus again. 

The Italian, who will be hoping for long-awaited electronic updates to help with acceleration at the Monday test, added: 

“Brno is a great track. Last year I was fast, but with MotoGP you never know. We’ll just have to see what happens. On Monday we’ll also have an extra day of testing at this circuit, which will be important. 

“It’s going to be a busy couple of weeks, especially now that we have two GPs in a row. It will be crucial for the championship and also for Yamaha that we’ll do some good races here and in Austria. 

“We want to secure our first race win of the season.”

Rossi’s most recent Brno victory came during his 2009 title season, followed by podiums in 2014, 2015 and 2016, plus a fourth place in last year’s wet-dry raceafter qualifying second on the grid.