Rossi: Broken leg didn't cost me MotoGP title shot

The Yamaha rider was forced to skip his home race at Misano after suffering his injury while training on a motocross bike at the start of September.

Despite doctors predicting he would have to rest for at least 30 days, he returned to MotoGP action at Aragon, taking part in Friday practice 22 days on from the breakage.

Rossi had been only 26 points adrift of the lead of the championship prior to Misano, but missing the Italian race and then crashing out in Motegi ended any hopes of him taking an eighth premier-class crown.

But the 38-year-old doesn’t believe that he could have kept pace with title protagonists Marc Marquez and Andrea Dovizioso in any case, owing to the Yamaha’s recurrent rear grip problems.

“For me, not a lot better because I have too many problems,” Rossi conceded when asked how much higher in the championship he would've been without his injury.

“During this season and like we spoke before Silverstone, I already said that I was not strong enough to fight for the championship.

“So, realistically speaking, even if I don't break the leg, I can't fight for the championship because I was not strong enough. I was never able to do two good races in a row.”

Rossi endured another difficult race in Sepang last weekend, finishing seventh and describing the 2017 iteration of the M1 as “impossible” and even “dangerous” to ride in wet conditions.

But the Italian feels the bike still has untapped potential, and that it is still capable of delivering strong performances in the dry.

“In my opinion the potential of the bike is not bad, the problem is it doesn’t work with the tyres,” he said.

“The bike at the start of the year had big problems, while this [2018-spec chassis] we’ve only had since Silverstone and then I broke my leg. So we are behind the others in certain aspects.

“But in the dry we have learned many important things, even though it has been a very difficult season.”

Additional reporting by Oriol Puigdemont and Scherazade Mulia Saraswati