Valentino Rossi is to travel to Aragon and attempt to race in the fourteenth round of MotoGP at the Motorland Aragon circuit.
After evaluating his fitness on a Yamaha R1M at Misano on Monday and Tuesday, the Italian had his leg assessed by Dr Pascarella, who performed the surgery on his broken tibia and fibula. After that examination, Rossi decided he was fit enough to travel to Aragon and attempt to race.
Rossi faces one more hurdle before he is allowed to race. He will be subject to a further assessment by the circuit doctors at the Motorland Aragon track, who will have to evaluate whether he is fit enough to race.
Rossi will have to demonstrate that his leg is capable of bearing the strains of riding a MotoGP bike, which will mean standing on the broken leg, and being able to jump and land on.
Michael van der Mark will also travel to Motorland Aragon, as originally planned, but the Dutchman will initially be on standby in case Rossi can’t ride.
Yamaha has until two hours before qualifying to replace Rossi, so in theory, Rossi could ride in FP3 and assess his fitness immediately after that session.
In practice, he is more likely to know whether he can actually race either directly after FP1, or on Saturday morning, after his leg has had a night to recover from the rigors of practice.
If Rossi does ride the bike in FP1, then pulls out, that will take some of the pressure off Van der Mark to score a result. With very limited time on the bike, expections on the Pata Yamaha WorldSBK rider will be very low indeed.
There is also a chance that Yamaha decides not to put Van der Mark on the bike at all if Rossi rides the first day. The precedent for this would be Loris Capirossi at Assen in 2008.
The Italian suffered a nasty puncture wound in his right arm after crashing in FP2 at Assen, and Ben Spies, who had traveled to Assen to replace Capirossi should he decide not to start the race after returning from a broken hand picked up at an earlier round in Barcelona.
As Capirossi had started the round, Suzuki were free not to replace him. That will also be the case if Rossi rides FP1, and decides he can’t continue.
Photo: © 2016 Tony Goldsmith / www.tonygoldsmith.net – All Rights Reserved
This article was originally published on MotoMatters, and is republished here on Asphalt & Rubber with permission by the author.
