The 2021 MotoGP season enters its final throes this weekend for PETRONAS Yamaha Sepang Racing Team’s Valentino Rossi and Andrea Dovizioso, as they tackle the Grande Prémio do Algarve – the penultimate GP of the year.
Heading into the penultimate race of his MotoGP career, Rossi will be hoping for a better outcome than he experienced at Portimão earlier this year, when he crashed out of the PortugueseGP. However, the Italian finished last year’s edition inside the points (12th) and ended EmiliaRomagnaGP with a top-ten finish two weeks ago – something he’ll be looking to replicate this weekend.
Team-mate Dovizioso goes into the AlgarveGP having never ridden the Yamaha YZR-M1 around the Portuguese circuit before. Despite this, the Italian racked up a sixth place finish there last year after starting the race from the fourth row of the grid. With points-scoring finishes in the latest two GPs, ‘Dovi’ will be hoping to maintain this trend and continue to make progress.
FP1 will get underway at 9.55am local time (5.55pm MYT) Friday for Rossi and Dovizioso, with lights out for the 25-lap MotoGP race at 1pm local time (9pm MYT) Sunday.