Italian Valentino Rossi will make his race debut in Europe with Ducati on Sunday.

Italian megastar Valentino Rossi will continue his initiation with the Ducati Marlboro Team this weekend at Jerez in Spain, marking his race debut on European soil aboard the Desmosedici GP11.

Rossi has won on seven occasions at the Jerez Circuit, five in MotoGP, and has climbed its podium a further three times, including last year.

He admits this weekend is simply a case of getting through the weekend concerning his injured shoulder, before he has a month to recuperate before the next GP.

“Qatar, with its many hard corner entries and areas where we brake to the right, was difficult for my shoulder,” Rossi said. “We’ll see if Jerez is a little easier from that point of view, although I think I’ll still have to grit my teeth for a while.

“Since Qatar, I’ve continued working out in the gym to try and increase my strength and especially my endurance, but after Spain I’ll have almost a month to recuperate more fully, following the postponement of the Japanese Grand Prix.

“From a technical point of view, Jerez doesn’t seem to have been the most favorable track for Ducati, but I’ve always liked it a lot and we’ll definitely have to try and do better than we have until now.

“For the moment, we’ll continue working on the setup, using everything we learned in Qatar, where we found some good solutions for the race.”

In addition to Troy Bayliss’ third place at Jerez in 2003, Ducati’s debut season in MotoGP, the team won at the circuit in 2006 with Loris Capirossi, while the squad’s sole Jerez podium of the 800cc era was with Casey Stoner, in 2009.