Reigning MotoGP champion Valentino Rossi will start tomorrow's 21 🔥lap battle - in what is looking increasing likely to be a dry race - from pole position for the second year in succession, after rain ruled out any threat to his Friday pace.

However, while his on track performance has been near perfect so far, the Italian isn't entirely happy, feeling that more safety changes need to be made to the Suzuka circuit. His words follow Marco Melandri's leg breaking crash on Friday at the turn 12 right-hander, which although has considerable barrier protection, the run off area before it is minimal.

"For safety, they need to change the point where Marco crashed. That point is too dangerous," Reuters report the Honda rider as saying. "From the exit from the hairpin you get up to very high speeds and there is no space. I crashed at the same point (in practice) l💝ast year but I was lucky. Marco was not lucky."

"I have spoken to the Suzuka organisers about this, yes. All I can do is give my o🐲pinion. If the o🥃ther (riders) agree with me then good," he shrugged.

Cynics would argue that Rossi's comments are unlikely to result♊ in any changes since it took Alan McNish's huge crash at the 130R corner, during qualifying for last year's F1 GP, before that was re-profiled.

The risks faced by bike riders, who regularly reach the same top speeds, are much higher for obvious reasons, but it's likely to take a complaint from Formula One before any more revisions are made to the spectac☂ular figure-of-꧃eight circuit.

Turning to the race itself, Rossi knows that despite the inconclusive qualifying, tomorrow will give a fair idea of who's hot in MotoGP this year.

"We h🐷ave ꦿdone much testing over the winter and tomorrow we race. You see the real level of everybody after 21 laps on Sunday afternoon!" grinned Vale.